Ah, yes, nothing beats waking up to your dad throwing open your bedroom door and yelling that you’ll be late to school if you don’t get up NOW.

Getting up requires being cold, so instead, I shimmy to the side of the bed and peer over at where my phone is resting face down on the floor charging.

Rescuing my phone from the ground, I stab a million times at the home button without looking at it as I simultaneously hide under my fuzzy blankets again.

It won’t turn on.

Wonderful, the phone is dead.

Wondering what time it is, I brace myself and sprint downstairs through the cold to check the microwave clock in the kitchen because no one in my family has a watch; we just use our phones.

IT’S 7:05.

TIME TO PANIC.

I speed up to my room to grab my backpack and the corpse of my phone, because even though it’s dead, I can’t leave it behind.

As I dash out the door, I make sure to inform my brother that it is entirely his fault that we are late, and I am definitely not to blame for any part of the situation. Sure, he might have waited for me for 25 minutes, but he didn’t put on his shoes until I came downstairs and those precious 90 seconds he took made us late to school.

To add to this crisis, I’m supposed to drive my friend Stephanie to school today, and I can’t warn her that we’re running late.

Once I pull up to her house, I debate leaning on the horn until she comes out. But, being the good citizen that I am, I decide that loud honking at 7:21 a.m. might disturb the peace. I also realize that my brother can’t text her because 1) he doesn’t have her number and 2) how am I supposed to know it?? Let’s be honest, the only cell phone numbers we have memorized in this era are our parents’ and our own.

Throughout the school day, I have discovered that I have a reflex that literally requires me to check my phone regularly. During first period alone, I picked up my phone and attempted to turn it on a grand total of 13 times. Maybe all the research on how teens are addicted to their phones isn’t as crazy as I thought.  

Addicted or not, I am quickly realizing that when I’m without my phone, I lose all of my connections to the rest of the world. This is wrong, bizarre. There is no constant music flowing into my ears, no fast-paced texting with friends when bored in class and no Instagram to scroll through mindlessly.

After an entire eight-period ordeal of phoneless torture, I figure out that dressing to run outside for track becomes far more complicated when you don’t know the temperature outside. The past few weeks have been a mix of running in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees to a single one degree. Compromise is usually a good solution to problems, so I wear a tank top and leggings.

I quickly discover that wearing a tank top today was the worst mistake of my young life. Additionally, my young life is quite likely going to end very soon because I’m convinced that I’m getting hypothermia and frostbite simultaneously. Pro tip: tank tops and eight degrees don’t go well together.

My experience when I get home only further convinces me that phones are a very vital part of society. Everyone seems to blame phones for their life problems, like, “Oh, I don’t get along with my parents because I’m on my phone and they lecture me.” Fun fact — even without a phone, your parents have many, many different subjects that they will lecture you on instead. (Apparently I’m lazy).

Additionally, to anyone who claims “I would be so much more productive if I didn’t have my phone,” I have news for you — Netflix can be accessed with a laptop, and as a result, it is 10 p.m. and my homework hasn’t been started and my room is still a mess. Tragic. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow.

While I await the glow of a small white apple to appear on my phone screen after plugging it in, I consider my potential addiction to my phone.

I recognize that I should probably make an effort to limit my use of it, but I don’t want to be the first person to stop.

I have Snapchats to respond to.