So just what is cracked screen grief? It is the stuff of nightmares. Wake up one clear morning, charging your old phone for the last time before heading down to your local phone store to pick up one of the first models of a newly release phone, only to have to slip out of your pocket THE DAY you bought it. Lift the phone off the ground to see the remnants of a cracked screen glaring at you.
I know this feeling well because like many, many others, I’ve experienced it, and in my case it was a brand new Galaxy Note 3 that I’m sure had just come off the assembly line the week previous.
And while one side of my brain was going through the trauma and devastation of my stupidity (I should have bought a case!), the other side was observing my emotional twitches and keeping a cold-hearted record of the progression of my internal drama.
After all, it’s just a cracked screen, right? Big deal. If you love your tech as much as I do, and I’m sure a lot of you would, then you’d probably see the loss of a phone as akin to the loss of a pet or even a family member. And yes, eventually I did get over what I’d done to my shiny new plaything, but everytime I saw the cracked screen staring back at me, I’d have a moment of heart arresting anger.
So here we are, and as part of my cathartic process I’d like to share with you a very personal journey into my mind, when faced with the reality of a new smartphone that is essentially “dead on arrival” – but through no’s fault but my own. May I present to you, the five stages of grief, as modified by the modern circumstance of a cracked screen.