Now my phone is too small.

I used to think that my phone was the perfect size. When my wife and I bought our new phones a couple of years ago, we were told that we had the latest, most up-to-date, state-of-the-art, best available, completely outfitted, technologically advanced phone of the perfect size.

And we did. Until we walked out of the store. The minute my wife and I walked out of the store, our phones became — to use a hopelessly outdated expression — yesterday’s news.

I should point out that when I say, “my phone,” I’m talking about my cellphone. It used to be that you had to differentiate between your cellphone and your non-cellular home phone . But nobody uses non-cellular home phones anymore, so now, when you refer to your phone, everyone assumes you’re talking about your cellphone.

For many years the people who make and market phones worked hard to make them smaller. Each year they claimed they had created the “smallest, sleekest phone on the market.”

And it was … until the people who bought the smallest, sleekest phone on the market walked out of the store and the people who make and market phones started working on a smaller, sleeker phone that they began selling as soon as all the older phones had been sold.

But now I have discovered that the phone that I thought was the smallest, sleekest phone on the market is too small and too sleek.

At least according to the people who make and market phones. Not long ago, the people who make and market phones unveiled their latest phone. Usually when the people who make and market phones unveil their latest phone I don’t pay attention because I don’t want to hear that using my current phone, which was state-of-the-art when we bought it, has made me the equivalent of a telegraph operator in Yuma, Arizona.

By the way, I mean no offense to Yuma, Arizona, which I’m sure is a fine community. I’ve never been there, but I’m sure it’s lovely.

It’s just that when I was trying to think of something terribly outdated, “telegraph operator in Yuma, Arizona” is the first thing that popped into my head.

The big selling point of their latest creation, according to the people who make and market phones, is that it’s bigger than last year’s phone.

See, I thought the advantage of a cellphone was that it was small enough so people could take it anywhere. But now we’re being told that the bigger the cellphone the better, and if you have a small phone you’re nothing but a pathetic, outdated loser.

That’s right. We’re talking about phone envy.

What the people who make and market phones now are saying is that it’s easier and more enjoyable to use bigger phones. The bigger phone allows for a bigger screen, they say, and that allows whatever appears on the screen to be bigger, which sort of makes sense.

But I don’t know. How far will the people who make and market phones take this bigger-is-better thing?

What’s next? A phone with a screen so big that you can mount it on the wall in your living room?

A phone so big that you never again have to worry about losing it because it’s too heavy to pick up?

Then what happens? I’ll tell you  what happens. As soon as  everyone in the entire world has purchased the last absolute latest, biggest, heaviest phone on the market the people who make and market phones will come out with the smallest, sleekest phone on the market.

And we’ll buy it which means  the whole process will repeat itself, proving  once again  that we are all morons.

Except for that telegraph operator in Yuma, Arizona.