I do not consider myself an ostentatious man. In public, I am conservative in dress and speech. I drive a minivan. I bathe regularly. But sometimes, something good happens in my life that I must declare from the mountaintop. Such a thing happened yesterday, when I successfully activated my replacement phone.

This beauty is the LG VX3300. If you convert that technical mumbo-jumbo into English, the translation is something like “Awesomephone” or “Futurebot.” Forget the Verizon iPhone, forget 2011; everything the world needed in a mobile device was already available when I purchased this baby in 2005.

“But wait, Scott,” I hear you saying. “This is but some robotic scarab, a featureless mound of plastic. Where are the buttons, man?”

Get a glass of water. Sit down and calm yourself. A quick flip of the thumb reveals all:

Deep breaths. Take small sips of your water. Don’t gulp! This is a moment you won’t soon forget, just as when mankind first beheld fire, or the wheel, or Kenny Rogers’ new face. These things have a subtle way of rewiring our brains indelibly.

What brought me to such amazing fortune? Two days ago, I placed a phone call with my 2010 touch-screen feature phone (how very common, now that I think of it). The conversation went something like this:

Wife: Hello?
Me: Hey, what’s up?
Wife: (Long pause) Heeeylo?
Me: Yeah, hello? It’s me.
Wife: Anyone? Hello?
Me: (Louder) Yeah, it’s me. Can you hear me?
Wife (Aside) No, get down from there. I told you not to… (click).

The next two attempts went roughly the same way. The microphone on my thoroughly modern mobile device had crapped out. I could send and receive text messages, and listen longingly to people on the other line shout “Hello!?”, but nothing more.

But lo! Hidden in the recesses of my file cabinet came the technological savior of the day, an emissary from 2005. I could hear the Verizon representative chuckle as he activated the ancient circuitry of the VX3300 remotely, like a NASA technologist sending radio signals to a distant, decades-old space probe.

“The only change to your account is that… well, your text message plan will no longer includes the ability to share photos,” he said.

The lack of a camera on the VX3300 softened the blow of this news.

The way I look at it, this phone is a product of more optimistic times. This messenger from 2005 seems to say, “hey, the coming housing crash won’t be so bad,” and “hey, I’m sure the Iraq war won’t last too much longer.”

In short, when I look at my scratched, mouldering phone, and listen to its midi-file ring, I know that tomorrow is going to be a better day. What else can we ask of our technology?