I Was the First Person in the World with an iPhone 6

The second most popular I have ever been was the time I went to a bar with a broken shoulder and my arm in a sling. Free drinks, sympathy, song dedications, the works.

The first most popular I have ever been, though, was when I became the only person in America to own the iPhone 6.

It happened by absolute chance in that I threw my perfectly acceptable iPhone 5 off a boat. This wasn’t so much an aggressive, “To hell with technology, I’m on the ocean!” throw as it was a casualty of my expressive nature and inability to make smart choices near large bodies of water. Everyone gasped and one person questioned why I didn’t dive in immediately after it (uh, because it’s not a cat, maybe?) but for some reason I wasn’t too concerned — partially because I had an old iPhone 4 I could use, mostly because I planned to borrow my dad’s phone in the replacement’s interim.

The novelty of having access to my dad’s supremely boring text messages wore off quickly. So did the “vintage feel” of my 4 which I found worked exceptionally well as a door stop or a brick. It was on a Thursday’s whim last week that I couldn’t take it any more so I called up Verizon, ordered my upgrade and then folded my hands like a patient angel in anticipation of a September 24th phone delivery.

Let me tell you: I have never witnessed a miracle quite like the one that walked into our office the very next day. He was from FedEx and he had my brand new phone about six days early, making me the first person in America to own the phone that no one could shut up about.

It should be noted somewhere, I guess, that the only proof I have about me being “first” in the US is that all the news outlets were repeating the same clip of an Australian guy – one of first iPhone 6 owners in the world! — dropping his phone screen-first into the ground. (Been there, done that, my friend. These glass apples fall like buttered toast.) But not one news source mentioned America, and facts are facts: very few people had the “6”at 4 PM on Friday, September 19th 2014, except for me, which meant getting stopped by 15 different strangers who saw the heat I was hand-packing, each one asking if they could touch it.

This was the exact moment I knew what it was like to be 9 months pregnant in Soho.

As a girl with short arms and a large group of friends, I’ve never been weird about handing a stranger my baby/phone before. The difference between someone taking your picture and holding your brand new phone, though, is that in the latter scenario it seems far more likely the entire thing could explode into a million pieces at any moment. Even worse is that each stranger had a billion questions:

“Do you like it?” I guess.

“Is that the Plus?” No, regular.

“But it’s big!” Not as big as your face though.

“It’s so thin!” Plz don’t comment on its weight.

“Does it do anything cool?” Mostly just phone calls and stuff.

“Can it play fetch?” I think so.

“Are you scared you’re going to break it?” Can I have my phone back?

I am not one for small talk or casual conversations with potential axe murderers in Zara so the technology tango annoyed me. But where I did find my brand new phone extremely valuable was in the vicinity of straight men — put to the test on least three separate occasions that weekend. If my glass began to run a little dry, I’d text extremely dramatically with the volume on so as to bring attention to my shiny device. One free beer, coming up! If I wanted to play a song on the juke box but couldn’t find any singles, I’d ask someone to hold my phone while I “looked for something.” Bam — T. Swift would start shakin’ it off ASAP. Even my own friends seemed to like me more. This might’ve had something to do with the fact that I was more responsive thanks to an active phone that wasn’t A) being a door stop B) my dad’s and C) at the bottom of the ocean.

By Sunday, however, people stopped caring; my popularity waned and as of last night my life resumed normalcy. It was both a relief, and sad — kind of like when I relinquished my sling — yet I can’t help but think that if I’d ordered the iPhone Plus, I’d still be queen.

Image on the left shot by Leo Krumbacher for Grazia Germany, Image on the right shot by Chris Craymer for Glamour UK