Lost in Toulouse

I've been writing about technology for 14 years, and I've often lamented that we're too attached to our phones. It's an addiction. We need to learn to live without them—well, not without them, but less with them.

In recent articles for publications like Wired, I've talked about how AI is going to become like GPS—Google Maps, whatever you want to call it. It will replace our ability to think. No one knows how to get anywhere without GPS now, and they don't bother to learn anything about their routes. They just trust the app. I think AI could similarly automate other things for us to a point where we stop thinking about them like we used to. We're at risk of losing a lot of muscle memory.

All of this came crashing down on me when my phone was stolen in Toulouse, France, where I'd been traveling alone. I felt like the biggest hypocrite in the history of time.

What happened was I was smoking a cigarette outside of the apartment I was renting at night, and some clownish young man started trying to make conversation with me, and he was joking around and getting too close to me. I wasn't having it, but he went away after a few minutes. I thought, "That was weird." Then I went back inside.

Once I got inside, I realized what had happened. He had been trying to get close to me so he could steal my phone. I don't know if he was going for my phone. I think he just reached into a pocket for something and got a phone, and now I didn't have one.

Suddenly, I felt real fear. I was now disconnected from my world in the U.S., I had no GPS to figure out where I was or where I would go. I just didn't have the thing I use for so much of my daily shit. I had an old phone in my luggage that I thought might be something I could activate in some way—but maybe not in Europe.

I freaked out. I reached out to friends through Instagram on my laptop. They told me to try and activate the old phone or maybe buy a new phone. Sure, I'll just drop $1,000 that I don't have. Great. I knew something had to be done, but I didn't know what.

It took me a while to figure out how to get to a place where they could help me, and in the meantime, I was just living without a phone. My sister, who's a bit older than me, reminded me that people used to get around without phones. "If you're worried about getting lost, just only go straight down one street and then come back," she said. "Look for landmarks so you don't get lost."

That made sense, and I remembered my life before the smartphone, so that's what I decided to start doing. Toulouse is not an easy city for this situation. The streets are small, they often run diagonally and there are so many little alleys and—the place basically feels like a maze in some areas. I followed her advice, though, and I basically stayed on one of three streets and never went too far from my apartment.

I'd look up a place I wanted to go on my laptop, and then I'd try to go there. I needed to go to a tobacco store, for instance, and I remember looking for landmarks to make the trip work. "Okay, there's a weird statue here," I'd think to myself before I turned off of a street I knew.

Eventually, I found a store on my laptop that I was pretty sure was the place to go to fix my problem. It was four blocks down one of my main streets, and then I just had to go three blocks to the right. "There's a big ugly building," I thought before I took that right. "I can handle this," I said to myself. I made my way there.

When I got to the store, luckily there was a young guy who spoke English. I explained my situation, and I showed him my old phone. We decided to replace the SIM card with a European one that comes pre-charged with minutes and data, and I hoped that would work.

When I got back to the apartment, it wasn't working. As I had feared, my AT&T phone only wanted an AT&T SIM card. I contacted AT&T on my computer and tried to plead my case for unlocking the phone so I could use this SIM card, but that didn't work. They weren't having it.

I went back to the phone store and explained what happened. He seemed shocked that a company would limit how you use something you own in that way. I agree. He said my only option was to buy a new phone and use the SIM card I had purchased. Terrific. Here comes the price tag.

I was shocked to learn they had decent smartphones for about $200 that I could buy and just start using right away. I didn't want to be spending that money, obviously, but it was a lot less than I thought it might be.

This time, I got back to my place, and the phone worked. I was free again. I could reach home again. I was a fully functioning adult again. I can't tell you how much relief I felt.

All of this is to say I still think we're too reliant on our phones, but we now live in a world built for phones, and it's damn hard to be without one when you're in an unfamiliar place. I have a little more respect for my phone now. Haha. I've been getting around with Google Maps and taking pictures of Toulouse, and it feels glorious after what happened to me. My trip is back on track. So thank you, young guy at GSM Services in Toulouse. You saved my trip and my sanity.