The Phantom Vibe

For as long as I have had a cell phone (almost 10 years), I have understood the value of the vibe-mode. I am constantly in places where I don't want the phone to ring, yet I can't always afford to be out of contact for that length of time. I may be on-call or I may just want to be available for the kids. Putting my phone on vibe has been a big help in these situations. Given that I have almost always kept my phone in a case on my belt, it's not hard to sense the vibe and answer within the first ring or two. 

Within the last 3 generations of phones I've used (BlackBerry, KRAZR, and before that, the classic RAZR), I've noticed that I will often sense a vibe when no vibe has occurred. I termed this the "phantom vibe". In conversations with a co-worker, I have discovered that he, too, experiences the phantom vibe on occasion. His situation is the same: he keeps his phone in a case on his belt. We've both marveled at the weirdness of it all. It's all too easy to experience the phantom vibe when I'm driving somewhere, but vibrations of the vehicle are easily transferred to the buckle of the seat belt creating a real sensation that actually masks real phone vibrations, so I take the phone out, put it on ring, and stick it somewhere on the console.

There are a lot of people with phones that obsessively check their phone, as if missing a call or a text would ruin their day and send their social life into a disastrous tailspin (It won't happen, people. Remember what life was like before your cell phone?). The phantom vibe has nothing to do with that peculiarity. It is an actual sensation of a vibration happening on your hip, not an obsessiveness of phone checkage. 

Well, if the phantom vibe isn't strange enough, I experienced something yesterday that trumps even that. I first noticed it as I was quietly enjoying a nice, shady spot at Greenwood (a cemetery in Fort Worth). I quietly waited for the cemetery crew to arrive and close my grave, and as I waited I noticed a vibration in my knee. I reach down to the area that was supposedly vibrating to determine if it were a real vibration or some freaky neural thing, and it moves further down my leg. Another time, it quits altogether. When I just sat there, assuming a position of indifference, it would return, along and about the vicinity of my knee. This story only gets weirder when you consider that the vibration was pulsing, just like my BlackBerry. There would be about 2.5 seconds of vibe, 2.5 seconds of nothing, then 2.5 seconds of vibe, which sort of added an air of man-madeness to it all. The pattern was continual, so whatever call I was receiving through my knee was not going to voicemail. At about the same time, I received a real call on my BB, and the timing of the vibes was remarkably similar, if not nearly identical.

When I got back to the office, I told a co-worker about the phantom vibe and my new phantom knee vibe experience. She starts telling me stories of folks back home that hear voices of people in their heads, as if my tale and their tales are similar. I quickly dismiss the comparison.

Not much later, as I sit at my desk, the knee vibe starts again. I reach down again, and it disappears, as if to elude detection and remove any evidence of its realness. I've had muscle twitches in my arms and legs before, and when you look down you can actually see the muscle going tick, tick, tick. None of that here. This thing is far smarter than that. Then I take my phone off my belt and place it on my desk, which is my desperate attempt to determine causality, as if my BlackBerry will possibly cause my knee to vibrate. The vibe remains. I then force myself to ignore it and it eventually goes away, though I don't remember when.

As of right now, it's gone. I have no doubts it will return.