ABOUT MY FIRST PHONE EXPERIENCE

I was in my junior secondary class when I got my first phone. It was a Samsung R210 and it was from my father.
It came with a Glo sim card and an instruction that I can only receive calls from my family members. So, I would go weeks without receiving calls. But it never really mattered to me.

Having a mobile phone was one of the biggest things back then for girls my age and a little older and in my class, anyone who had a phone was a big girl.

During break periods and after school sometimes, the girls who had no phones but had their boyfriends' numbers written down or offhand, would come with their numbers to call.

They would hide the numbers they were calling with and one time, a classmate said it was to secure their relationships.
I hadn't used my Samsung R210 for long before it developed a screen problem and my father bought me a Motorola C113. It wasn't a new one at the time, but what did I care?

This time, it came with an MTN sim card and same instruction.
So, when I began to grow bored from basking in the fact that I owned a phone at a really young age, and from playing the games on the phone, I began to call MTN customer care line.
I would say I have an issue with my sim and then I would hang up.

This happened for days until one afternoon when a customer care told me they knew where I was calling from.
She said they had been recording my calls and would track me down to my area should I try to call them again.
And that was the last time I ever called them back then.

I learnt something else to do with my phone later and that was to make up numbers and flash or to call and ask that they called me back.

I don't remember who taught me but this person said I could find my 'destiny helper' through that means.
Destiny helper - it was what almost every kid my age I knew back then wanted never minding that most of us had no idea about our lives.

This destiny helper could be a friend or a boyfriend.
I would try this for a while before giving up because the men and women I made up their numbers were much older people.

Although prior to this, my father had become aware of how often I received calls and whenever he asked, I told him it scared me too. That I feared someone had left my number somewhere.

He would begin to make plans of getting me a new sim until I learnt a better way to use my phone - or so I thought.
Google had introduced a feature that enabled phone users to get answers to any question for ten naira.
All that was required was to send the question to the provided number via text message.

MTN also introduced a feature that enabled its users to meet new people everyday by registering on the MTN Chat via text message.

I was able to make one friend and fortunately, we are still close friends. It's been about ten years now.
I used a few other phones like that before java, Symbian and now android.