For Christmas last year, my husband gave me a Fitbit.
I had asked him for a watch. And, as he pointed out to me, the Fitbit does tell time.
But what I wanted for Christmas was to take a step back from technology. To not be checking my phone for the time. To not always be tapping my laptop awake for it. And the Fitbit was actually my fault because I know better.
What I should have asked for was a pocket watch, or a sundial. Then my husband, who’s a tech fanatic and whose gifts I can never get right, either, would have made the requisite five jumps forward and landed on alligator-leather wristwatch.
He told me I could return it. And I was going to return it. I was almost definitely going to return it.
But first I just wanted to try it on.
And the Fitbit was so cool, you guys!
I loved my Fitbit. It was the first thing I put on in the morning. It was the last thing I took off at night. I got mad at myself, sometimes, because I was breastfeeding last winter and wouldn’t remember to put on my Fitbit before I walked to my daughter’s room for her 2 a.m. feed.
It’s just that every step was so precious.
My mom’s birthday is five days after Christmas. I was instantly hooked, so I got one for her, too. Then my husband, who really cannot resist anything that connects to a smartphone, bought one for himself.
For a month, we were all addicts and competing with one another. For a month, and for maybe the first time in her life, my mom was happy to be on the short side (more strides).
My mom and I, we sashayed our way all over Manassas. I felt really good. I felt proud.
Looking back on it, I did things that month I’m not proud of. I made all my friends “connect” with me on the Fitbit website, and then I judged them by the number of steps they took. If it was fewer than I took, they weren’t walking enough. If it was more, they were showing off.
That’s a jerk move. But it got worse than that.
Every walk I went on, I was checking my steps. At stoplights, on street corners where there were cars. When other people were talking to me. My 2-year-old son would hand me rocks for his rock collection, and I’d have to stop fiddling with my burnt-calorie count to take them.
It got worse than that.
I shopped around. I tried out the Fitbit Zip, which you don’t wear on your wrist. You can just attach it to your waistband, or your bra. Then I got mad at my husband for not telling me I could also wear it in my pocket and that it would register the highest number of steps that way. Why had he been holding out on me? Because he wanted to beat my count! I just knew it.
The time I accidentally washed my Fitbit in the laundry, I gasped. Actually gasped, like a harlequin romance baroness. Then it turned out to be water-resistant, and I fell in love all over again. With my husband, I mean. Obviously. Because he had purchased it for me.
What we had—my Fitbit and I—it was special. But then other people, people who weren’t my parent or spouse, started infringing on us. That’s when things took a turn.
People would comment on it in line at Costco or while I was picking my son up at daycare. A gentleman once approached me at a gas station at night—the last place to accost a baroness.
They would see the watch and say, “Oh, you Fitbit! I Fitbit. How do you like yours?”
And yes, I had strong feelings for my Fitbit. But I never wanted to introduce myself to its parents. I never wanted to go to my Fitbit’s nephew’s bar mitzvah after-party. I never wanted to count myself in the Fitbit family, which is a marketing scheme I’m noticing a lot of these days.
Recently, for instance, we ordered a blender. At the time, I didn’t pay attention to the brand name (it’s a Ninja) or its selling points because it’s a blender and I didn’t think there were too many ways to screw it up. I also thought I could pretty well easily skip the pamphlets that came inside the box, and I could have, if they hadn’t leapt out at me like a can of fake snakes. WELCOME TO THE NINJA FAMILY! they screamed. Then there was a long list of italicized bullet points. Some of the bullet points were about my pulse versus high versus medium speed options, but the bottom line seemed to focus on the Ninja philosophy, upon which they were sure I agreed. After all, I was one of them now, whether I liked it or not. Even if I took the Ninja blender back to the store for a refund, I was branded. I knew too much.
No offense to the fine people at Ninja Inc., but I’m not a Ninja blender person. That’s not a part of my identity. Though I’m sure there are a lot of people that’s working for, like the 44,000-plus of them Facebook says are talking about Ninja blenders on Facebook right now, this very second.
It was pretty soon after the Ninja that I started tucking my Fitbit under my sleeve.
It’s not that I didn’t want people seeing me wear it. It’s that I didn’t want them to think of me as part of their club. To see me as an adherent to their system of values and beliefs. To figure they should come talk to me because I was, on some level, them.
Basically, I didn’t want them seeing me wear it.
Even though I like people! I like walking. And, when I’m being my most honest self, that gets me, too: I liked walking before it was cool.
I grew up walking. Not even to get from place to place—just for the hell of it. Eventually we had a dog, but before we did, we didn’t.
I know I don’t have dibs on walking. Anyone can do it. Lots of people do. Then again, most people don’t. Which isn’t to suggest I’m more fit than most people—far from it. But a lot of you go to the gym, or swim laps, or play tennis. Good for you. I don’t have any of that. I have putting my left foot in front of my right.
So I quit-Bit. It wasn’t a sudden decision but rather a more conscious one that I would have confessed at the time. For an afternoon I fiddled with it and sulked in a chair. The next morning I “forgot” it lying on my nightstand. The morning after that one I did the same thing. These days it’s sitting unused on a countertop next to a phone charger and a pair of AA batteries, where I sometimes check it for the time.
You know what I did that second morning, though, the one when I left behind my Fitbit for good? I went for a walk with my 2-year-old. We looked both ways before we crossed the street—every street. We looked both ways with our undivided attention. We found lots of really, really great rocks.
I haven’t gotten around to deleting my Fitbit’s online account. So you can connect with me, if you want to, and cast dispersions on my step count, which is zero. It’s OK if you want to. I completely understand.
While you’re checking it, I’ll be out doing my thing, putting one foot in front of the other. No hard feelings—it’s just that walking’s kind of my thing.
