[Ramblings: Ringtones]

My maternal figure is obsessed with ring tones. She can’t stand anything standard because she feels like it’s “ugly” and not “unqiue” enough for her tastes. However, she’s also too cheap to buy anything that is being sold by the phone companies (I don’t understand by she wouldn’t accept Oops I Did It Again, I was even willing to pay for it.) What resulted was hours of her looking for youtube videos with her favorite Christian songs so she could try to convince my brothers and I to rip it and upload it for her phone. Hallelujah indeed.

The funny thing with ring tones, it’s one of those things that was so very important five years ago and now, people just have conveniently moved on from. Everyone I knew in high school had their own song that was oh, so expressive of their life (usually the same 15 pop romance songs for the girls and variations of Because I Got High for the guys). Even voicemails- how many of you have called and heard the standard leave-a-message-after-the-beep blurb with a static-y version of Beyonce’s Crazy Love in the background?

I’m guilty of my own revolving playlist of ring tones when I was younger. I remember setting my ex’s ringtone to Because of You by Kelly Clarkson (I swear we didn’t break up because of domestic violence, he was a gentleman.) My maternal’s incoming calls were Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson (I liked to see it as instructions on what to do while answering the phone.) My favorite by far was I’m Normal, Please date me by Charlotte Martin.

This little ditty is a great tongue in cheek for the average girl able to laugh at herself. After all, who here hasn’t felt a bit stalkerish? (Anyone who’s never tried googling a first date or facebook stalking a crush can cast the first e-stone.) We all want to assure ourselves (and we wish our male counterparts could understand) that we really are normal, we’re just…a bit insecure. We want to feel like we don’t give a damn but at the end of the day, gauging interest through how many hot female friends he has friend-ed and whether or not he has a criminal record is just too easy to give up. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it happens.

My ringtone these days is the guitar strum of the iPhone defaults. Do I want to get a custom ringtone? I guess, but it doesn’t seem as important as before when walking across a college campus and having heads turn at “…My probation officer is kinda cute…” was a moment of win. Or maybe I’m just worried that my boss just might not get the joke of just how normal I am. (Restraining orders not included, I swear.)