iPhone, Why-phone.

I wish I had a nickel for every time my hubby has talked about, mentioned, or gazed longingly after the iPhone. I would be a rich girl.

I have fought it tooth and nail. I have made him wear blindfolds to the mall so he can't go into cell phone stores. I have blocked the Apple website from our computer. I have jumped between him and his friends when they pull out their nifty iPhones to protect him from the contagious and hypnotizing you-need-this-too vibes that seem to radiate from the thing.

Well, maybe I haven't gone to those extreme of measures.
Yet.

Why, you might ask, am I so anti-iPhone?
Well, there's a myriad of possibilities. Mostly, I think, it's just because it's a want, not a need. And yes, even though it's okay to have some wants, our budget seems to limit us to the occasional ice cream or cheap metre of fabric want...not the bajillion-dollar (um, maybe an exaggeration) electronic wants. And because I'm not convinced the internet ever needs to be that accessible...unless you're a travelling business-man-type.

Well....we may have had to go over the want-not-need point at least once every two weeks for the past year...but that was okay. D-Hubby just needed someone to say no. Kind of like I need him to tell me the same thing when I mention things I know I don't need...but am having a hard time telling myself no.
The reminder would at least stave off the iPhone hunger for another two weeks.

Until...
D-Hubby's current cell phone broke.
Which was right about the same time that the iPhone4 promotional ads were in full-swing.
Oh.
My.
Goodness.

So with genuinely needing another cell phone, and with the iPhone4 staring him in the face constantly in all its camera-on-the-front-too glory, things were rough for him in the inner iPhone-battle department. Which translated into reasons for the "no" needing to be more and more substantial. And discussed just about daily.


Holy Smokes. Talk about exhausting.


So, finally, the opportunity came for him to possibly get his hands on one. He knew when a certain supplying store was getting their shipment in. And, if he did the wait-around, the possibility of having his own iPhone4 was close enough to taste.
Therefore, the night before this particular shipment day, we had to have a necessarily long discussion about this whole iPhone thing.
Delaying gratification came up. No-moola came up. Need vs. want came up (again). Getting lost in the internet came up. Resisting the lure of just-cause-everyone-else-has-it came up. Everything that made me object to the thing came up. And once I had gotten it all out there, and could say no more, I ultimately left the decision up to him...much to his chagrin. Just tell me yes or no was something I recall him repeating more than once. Baha. I laughed every time, too, because I totally get that. Wouldn't that be so much easier sometimes, in those decisions where you're so torn? But he knew our situation and my feelings about it. Ultimately, I felt this decision had to be his.

This story has a happy ending.

He did wake up early to go play the waiting game at the store.
But ultimately, what he ended up doing, was something that made me so SO proud of him.

He is now the owner of a phone that is not the iPhone. It was not the cheapest phone you could get, but it was cheaper than his original muse-of-a-iPhone, within our budget, and still had the features he needed in a cell phone. (Plus a few extras. But we won't start with that. Ha.)
And we made an agreement that if the phone ever started regularly interfering with his face-time with his family and friends, that out it went. And he gets one and a half weeks to be all oogly and in-love with the thing while he's figuring it out. Then, it goes back to being just a phone, and not his newest child.
(Speaking of which, the real thing arrives in just 11 weeks! Eeee! Baby!)

And so.

D-Hubby was not only able to curb his desire for the iPhone and make a much-wiser decision on behalf of his family, it was a decision that he came to on his own (and then ran it by me, of course. Just the married thing to do...). :)

We're proud of that man, Baby-Rae and I. And grateful for his example.

...Now to ask him about me getting that Cricut again....it has been two weeks, after all...