Phantom Vibration Syndrome: Yes, It’s a Thing, Maybe

So get this. I’m sitting at my desk the other day, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, my left leg starts twitching. Which is no big deal, really. I keep my cell phone in my front left pants pocket, and it’s almost always set to vibrate. And so, when my leg twitches, it has historically meant that I’m getting a phone call or text. I instinctively reached for my phone. And that is precisely the moment when I realized something was amiss. My phone wasn’t there. Despite the fact that my physical senses told me—without the shadow of a doubt—that my phone was in my pocket vibrating away, in reality, my phone was sitting on top of my desk, right in front of me, decidedly not in my pocket, and it was not ringing.

My first reaction was not one of scientific curiosity. I did not ponder the implications—physiological, psychological, perhaps even emotional—of this new, strange attachment that my left thigh had developed toward an inanimate object. Instead, I bowed my head in frustration and shame. My body never seems to get anything right. When I was growing up in East Tennessee, it was important to be good at sports. Unfortunately, my body interpreted the word “important” to mean “be as incompetent as possible.” The concept of hand/eye coordination eluded me the same way that the concept of an earth that revolved around sun eluded the medieval church. Not to be outdone by my eyes and arms, my knees have since decided that they will be largely ineffective in running long distances or handling downhill hikes. Now, it seems, one of my large muscle groups has developed an unnatural, metaphysical relationship with my iPhone. In my estimation, this was just another let-down in a long chain of body-related disappointments.

I’ve tried looking on the bright side. But I don’t think there is one. It would be one thing if my leg twitched only when my cell phone was actually vibrating. That would basically set my quad up to be a remote early warning detection device for a ringing phone, which I could at least pass off as a cool party trick. But, no. My leg wanted to develop a super-power so irrelevant that not even the local news would care.

And while I’m making embarrassing confessions, I’ve got a really bad habit about using the Internet to solve  unanswered questions I may have about anything. Usually, this is an awful idea, like when you’re sick and you Google your symptoms only to discover that you’ve developed typhoid, or alternatively, when you have Typhoid and you Google your disease only to find out that you can only catch typhoid if you’ve forded a river in a covered wagon and you’ve also just lost several of your oxen:

Regardless, I Googled my symptoms anyway. To my shock and chagrin, not only have other people experienced the same phenomenon, there’s a name for it: Phantom Vibration Syndrome. A fair number of people—ostensibly just as defective as I am—have reported the same circumstance where they believe they’re receiving an incoming call, feel their phone vibrating, and realize their phone is nowhere on them. And it’s a syndrome. Then I began to wonder if anyone has exploited this, say, through class action litigation, and if so, how do I get a piece of that pie??

The short answer: it looks like there’s no litigation out there. Sad. I guess it only makes sense when you think about it. There’s no physical damages. And to the extent there could be, I kinda brought it on myself. But who knows? Maybe there is a potential threat of litigation against cell phone manufacturers based on this phantom physical experience. And while I do believe such a suit would be ultimately unsuccessful, as everyone knows, there’s a lot of litigation to be done before the case would be kicked out of court.

In the mean time, I guess I’ll just continue to live with myself, biding my time til the next opportunity for my body to come up with some weirdo excuse for being lame.

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