I’m Not The Hero I Could Be, But I’m Not The Dog I Was

I broke a vow I made to myself tonight. I didn’t make the vow tonight, I made it a while ago, but it became necessary to break it tonight. No, see it wasn’t even necessary. It was convenient. I tried like hell to keep myself strong, to stay true to my beliefs and my principles, but when it came time to be the man I want to be, the man I think I could be, my resolve crumbled and I turned out to be as weak and horrible as I always feared. I could blame it on circumstances, on desperation, or any one of a myriad external causes, but in truth I have no one to blame but myself.

I shopped at Wal-Mart tonight.

I know, I’m a hypocrite. I’m a horrible person. I feel like I just ate a big bag of veal while riding in the back of a stretch Hummer. If you’re into gruesome (yet boring and tedious) details, you’ll enjoy the rest of this post.

It all started this past spring. Yeah, it really did. I was making preparations for a month in the United Kingdom, and I checked to see if my Motorola v220 would work overseas. It turns out that Vodafone uses that model in the U.K. I tested the phone with a SIM card from another network, just to be sure it was not locked to Cingular, and took off for the land of Queens and Bowies. Long story short, although it may be too late for that, my v220’s charger fell victim to the eccentricities of British electricity shortly after my arrival. To compensate, I purchased a Sagem my-v55, the cheapest pay-as-you-go model to use in the U.K. (I couldn’t find a v220 charger, in case you were wondering) and brought it back to the States so I wouldn’t have to shell out cash for a new Motorola charger. It worked okay, but lately it has had some... quirks. It generates a text message each time I have a voice mail (at 10¢ a pop), and has had some difficulties in finding the Cingular network. Also, I am only able to charge it through a special WindowsXP program on my desktop computer, which is not exactly convenient.

This weekend, I decided it was time to bite the damn bullet and buy a new charger for the v220. Did I find it online? No. Did they have it at the Cingular Store? Sadly, no. Was it at Target? BestBuy? No, and no. Was it at Wal-Mart? God help me, it was. I bought a car charger and a wall adapter for $16 altogether. And it works. It works great. Now I can’t use the phone anymore without thinking about how I contributed, knowingly, to... no, it’s too horrible.

So next time I get uppity about the DVD player or groceries you bought at Hell-Mart, just ask me how my phone is treating me.

I’m such a filthy turd.

[Late edit: I'm posting simultaneously here, at blog.myspace.com/moontos and at xanga.com/moontos until I figure out which one I like best]