I ordered my niece to give me a phone so that I may be able to communicate with emergency services in case my heart stops beating or if I have a stroke. I told her, "Nothing fancy, beta, not a cellular phone. Just please give me something simple and inexpensive that plugs into the wall." She comes home and brings me this purple piece of shit phone with "Hannah Montana" written all over it.
So I plug this thing in and it works just fine. The voice quality is normal. The ringer is fine. The call-waiting feature works appropriately. The only downside to this phone is the cold, dead-eyed stare of Miley Cyrus glaring at me every time I make a phone call.
I turn the phone upside down so that I don't have to look at this godless little jezebel and I see the words, "made in china" written on the back. My mind begins to wander. I think about the factory in China where this phone was made. I think about the factory worker responsible for this specific phone. He's probably some kid less than 13 years old, operating some giant molding machine that melds this piece of shit together with hot ass plastic. I wonder how he feels when he sees this same image of Miley Cyrus. He probably ignores the image at first, but after the 5,000th time seeing it, he starts to despise not only the image, but her as well. This girl is probably only a few years older than him and earns more in a month than his entire province earns in a year. He probably thinks about how he would do anything to have an American education, while this girl can barely read and could care less about it. He is thinking about how this girl is too stupid to even calculate how much money she earns, while he lacks the opportunity to study mathematics on his own because he must work in the factory for 15 hours a day or his parents will starve. Even if he had the resources, his body is too exhausted, his hands too calloused, and his mind too altered from breathing in hot ass plastic fumes all fucking day to think about anything other than sleep after coming home from work.
I was once in a similar situation. But I don't care anymore because my Hannah Montana phone is ringing.
