When I hung up, I realized my husband had officially become part of the Cell Phone Abuse Age. Couldn’t he have waited five, ten minutes to call me? Ever wonder why it’s called a “cell” phone? Because it imprisons us, ties us down to the Gotta Get it Done Now habit of the new millennium.
Granted, Americans are just catching up to Asians and Europeans who bonded these tiny technologies to their bodies long ago. I remember the late Rabbi Cary Yales of Lexington’s Temple Isaiah including in a sermon six years ago that he was startled by the colossal use of cell phones on a recent trip to Japan. I will never forget our dear, classy rabbi telling his congregants he knew cell phones had gone too far when a phone rang on a guy next to him….at a urinal!
Well, my friends, if anyone’s willing to admit it, I’ll bet we lucky Americans are there, here, today. Aren’t we proud of ourselves?
I was on vacation in San Diego with my nine-year-old, Melissa, last April. People carried cell phones everywhere. Even at the zoo. Seconds before we were cleared for viewing Papa, Mama and Baby Panda, a cell phone rang. Those Pandas are so darn used to cell phones by now, I swear I saw the sleepy Papa turn toward the Mama and say, “You get it; it’s always one of your girlfriends anyway!”
After vacation, I found another oldster who agrees with me. I went to see Tom Rush in concert. He noted with disgust that his Producer and Manager make him carry a beeper and a cell phone everywhere he goes. “What?” he asked the audience, “in case there’s a Folk Music Emergency?”
No kidding. Weren’t these devices originally meant for vital calls, emergency roadside service, children needing to reach parents, and other calls that simply couldn’t wait? Or, business calls to keep the Big American Cog Rolling? Are cell phones for common calls so important?
Imagine if cell phones were available decades ago? Instead of making enormous history, Rosa Parks may have gotten off the bus, called to say she’d be late because she’d rather walk than sit in the back of the bus one more day!
Think about it: There’d also have been no “one if by day, two if by night.” Instead, there’d be “expect a conference call on our cell phones somewhere around midnight.”
Heck, Lassie wouldn’t have had to rescue Timmy so often if the boy had carried a cell phone, so what would have kept fans riveted each week?
Furthermore, how can cell phones be good if two people who made them famous are OJ Simpson and Charles Stuart? Whoops, my husband reminds me Charles Stuart’s phone was an installed car phone. That raises an entirely different and dangerous issue, drivers on the phone can be wacko, but I can’t go there because I used to have one.
But that phone—by my deliberate choice—was attached umbilically to my vehicle. When I left my car, the phone stayed behind. I was a free agent. Just me and the fine art of being totally, unequivocally cut off, incommunicado from things that could wait.
In the true fashion of my socially-conscious children, Melissa reminds me that not everyone has the desire for, or luxury of, free time, nor the ability to shut out reality the way she and I gloriously did those seven precious days in San Diego. True; those people are forever excused from my cell phone wrath.
Dear Reader: One serious disclosure: The day of the Arts for All! festival that I chaired for the Bedford Center for the Arts, I was on my feet from 9 a.m. until dusk, and I carried my husband’s cell phone on me in case of emergencies. There was only one, around 4 p.m.: I called Steve to bring me an iced coffee.
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