Him, me and the little Blackberry tart

I’m having some sympathy these days with the late Princess Diana who famously observed, “there were three of us in this relationship.”

In her case, the third one was Camilla. In my case, the third one is the Blackberry.

It’s been going on for years – this thing between He Who Can’t be Named and his Blackberry. And it’s been happening right under my nose.

If I had the luxury of choosing between Camilla and the Blackberry, I think I’d pick Camilla as the mistress.

She at least had the decency to stay more or less in the background while Diana and Charles were together. She also had the decency to be less good looking than the Diana.

Not so the Blackberry.

He Who Can’t calls it his “Pearl.” He’s always going on about its beautiful sleek lines, its compact body and its “intuitive functionality.” I guess his Pearl knows what he likes.

But I don’t call the thing Pearl. I call it the Little Tart.

And a brazen Little Tart it is, too. Unlike the more measured behaviour of Camilla, the Little Tart has no sense of moral or social decorum.

We could be in the middle of a family dinner, at a party, or asleep in the middle of the night and it thinks nothing of waltzing in and blurting out that sexy little ring tone. It always gets his attention.

Then you see the two of them skulking off to a quiet corner to commence their congress. I don’t even ask what goes on anymore. I don’t want to know.

But when he’s behind the wheel and can’t jump to its beck and call, do you know what he does? He asks me to answer it. Me! The long-suffering legitimate partner answering the sexy ring tone of the Little Tart!

I ask you.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Last week he had the nerve to bring the Little Tart into the bedroom. Apparently, it has quite the alarm clock functionality, and each morning at 4:30 am, I had the pleasure waking out of a dead sleep to hear that functionality. Charming.

And on Saturday morning, I had the further pleasure of hearing the 4:30 am functionality again because he forgot to turn off the alarm. I guess the Little Tart is always turned on.

But the worst slap in the face is the email functionality. You see, the Little Tart is set up to vibrate whenever an email comes in. You hear it going “buzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzz.”

This would be the Little Tart in passive aggressive mode. You know, it doesn’t come right out and ring, but it still wants his attention. So off he goes again to start pressing the Little Tart’s little buttons.

One night, he came to bed with Little Tart mistakenly attached to his pajamas. I awoke in the middle of the night to the bed vibrating with in-coming emails.

That’s when I issued the ultimatum: the Little Tart or me. I don’t think he was quite awake because the Little Tart hasn’t gone away.

I have considered dropping it in the garbage, you know, by mistake. But he’d only go out and find another. Nothing would be solved.

So what does a girl do when there’s three in her relationship? Well, she goes out and gets a Blackberry of her own, of course. I call it my Little Stud.

Freelance mobile phone user Gail Lethbridge likes the sleek lines of her Little Stud. Visit her blog: http://giftedtypist.com