I got my first cell phone in seventh grade only because the middle school was far enough away from my house and I'd be walking home. It was a black, boxy phone that had a slide-out keyboard. It was awesome, and my mom and I got them at the same time. I was super excited to start using my phone. The screen was like a one-inch box, and the camera was absolute garbage. But I loved that phone because it was my first phone. We went through middle school together, and the first two years of high school together. I was so good at typing on it that I didn't even need to look at the keys. I think there were like four preset games on it that were super fun and occupied my time. This phone also went on all kinds of trips with me. It went to Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, and a few others. It was especially useful on a church mission trip to New Orleans when it got soaked after I ran through the pouring rain one day. But, after soaking in a bowl of rice for like three days, she still worked as best as she could after that traumatic event.

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. When she finally gave out, probably because of all the dents and chips to her exterior, the scratches on the screen, and the water damage to the hard drive, I upgraded. My next phone was a Verizon Pantech slide up phone. It was red and black and awesome. It was wider than my last phone but longer. The screen was bigger, and I could set GIFs as my background. He keyboard was scrunched and harder to use, but it was still pretty awesome. I only used that phone to make calls and text my parents, because I also had an iPod touch that I used to text my friends, who all had iPhones, and take pictures. I thought I was hot sh*t. This phone only lasted two years because I refused to go to college without an actual phone. So before I left for school, I bought my first iPhone.

My current phone is the iPhone XR, and I am so in love with it. I didn't know a phone could function this fast and take such amazing photos. Plus having 128 GB of storage is pretty awesome and luxurious. But even though I have an amazing phone right now, I don't think I would value it as much if I started off with a smartphone. Plus, it's such a memory from middle and high school that I wouldn't want to forget that. It's a fun memory to reminisce that my mom and I had the same phone and that our phone numbers are only one digit different. And it was the first big product I had the responsibility of keeping track of. It sounds silly, but I don't mind because it's fun to talk about previous phones and our upgrading over the years.