I don't have a cellphone. Never have. I'm not bragging. Fact is, I realize that to most people this makes me Dooshy McDouche.
'What the hell is wrong with you,' they say, 'what if your wife or kids need you?' 'Well, I do have an office phone and built-in car phone, I just don't have a cellphone -- you know, something I carry in my pocket.' 'But what if you're not at work or in your car and your wife wants you to pick up milk?' 'Well, milk's not really that good for you anyway.' 'And what if it's an actual emergency, what then?' 'If it's an emergency then my wife can call whoever I'm with and they'll hand me their phone.' 'But what if she doesn't know who you're with, or you're not with anyone?' 'Then she'll do what wives have done for thousands of years and she'll just have to wait until I get home.'
Half of them turn on me right there.
'Yeah,' they go, 'but this isn't a thousand years ago, Dooshy -- aren't you going to want to know where your kids are the next time there's a flippin' (sic) terrorist attack?' 'Correcto,' I state confidently, weighing whether to cave or wrack my brain for a response, 'but, um, in the 1950s and '60s weren't we constantly on the brink of atomic war and didn't daddys get by without cellphones?' 'Okay, what if someone close to you died and no one could reach you,' she says, slapping down her trump card, 'how would you feel then?' 'Well, how would it hurt to get a few extra minutes of happiness before getting the bad news?'
Look, if I just found out about 9/11 today, I'd be on my back counting my breaths. But I guarantee I would've had a better last decade than you. While everyone was on pins and needles waiting for the next blow, I was a care-free idiot.
Remember when cops used to throw drunks out of bars and then help them to their cars? They'd plop us in the driver's seat, start it up, and point me in the general direction of home. Well, that's where you guys are right now. You're completely out of control with the cellphones and nobody's taking the problem seriously. The worst drug addicts on that God-forsaken street in Vancouver have a vague recollection of sobriety. Not you. You all look at me like I'm the nutcase. People say, 'Wow, must be weird not having a cellphone,' and I tell them, 'Well, not really. It's just like how it was for you before you had a cellphone.' 'But how do you text?' 'I don't,' I say, and I get that empty look which reminds me how alone I am.
And let's admit something else -- they're not really cellphones anymore. Calling an iPhone a phone is like calling a jumbo jet an oven. Yeah, there's a phone in there somewhere but that's really a computer your kids are staring at when you're cruising past the Grand Canyon in your Odyssey. Doesn't that make you a little mad? What happened to driving in a car and just looking out the window? Your kids are giving up the entire physical world for this narcissistic/sychophantic/addictive need to follow someone or see who's following them.
I'm not a complete technophobe. I do email and got lasik surgery and I like those new, vaporizer one-hitters that you can use in restaurants, and I've even done a few tweets from my computer this year. And, like I said, I have phones at home and at work and even built in to my car, but you know when I don't have one? When I'm walking down a country road or on a beach or at a football game.
I know the arguments -- I'm just an old man, horse and carriage, etc. Until recently my kids were embarrassed by my refusal to come on board. My little daughter would say, 'You're stupid! Why won't you get a cellphone, everyone else's dad has a cellphone!'
And I'd say, 'Well, because if I had a cellphone, honey, I'd be on the phone right now instead of sitting here with you, deciding whether I want to fight your mother for custody.'
Actually, my daughter doesn't talk like that and I'm not getting a divorce, I don't think, but for a long time my kids were upset that I didn't have a phone. My wife, too. She keeps suggesting that I get one and just keep it turned it off. But everyone would know it's still with me. Isn't there an implicit understanding when you have a phone that you're going to check in periodically with the other phone-carrying people?
I admit, there would be some advantages to having a cellphone -- like being able to hound my kids any second of the day no matter where I was. But I also know myself and I'm weak. If there's a chocolate cake in my house, I eat it, and if I had a cellphone I'd be on it all the time. I'd be checking scores and injury reports and emails and stocks and I'd be Tweeting and Vextstering and Instagraming and, even when I wasn't on my phone, the anticipation of incoming information would be cluttering my brain and distracting me and keeping me from ever just sitting in a room with my kids and talking, like I do now.
I get this a lot: 'You're lucky. The rest of us have to have phones, we don't have a choice. We need it for our jobs.'
Which is another thing -- why are workers suddenly expected to have their cellphones on them pretty much all the time? And why is no one questioning that? Your lunch break isn't really a break if you're electronically tethered to your boss. Even if he doesn't call, he's there. And when you go home or out with friends, you're not really away if you're at the mercy of someone's fingertips. Remember the old reach-out-and-touch-someone phone ads? Now you're being molested!
So today, right in this newspaper or whatever you call it, I'm starting a movement. What I'm proposing is simple: Every human being should have the right to unplug. There should be laws, amendments, legislation. When you leave your place of business, you should be done. Seven o'clock should mean seven o'clock and a phone call from your boss after that should count as a pinch in the ass -- that would make them think twice. And when you're on the golf course or at the movies and your wife or husband call about nothing, that should be viewed as some form of verbal abuse that would be admissible in court later.
One night this week when you go out, try leaving your cellphone home. Pull off the information super-highway and come back to the dirt roads for a while. It'll be hard at first, like quitting drinking for the month of February, but after a while it'll get easier and quieter and you'll find a clarity that you've probably forgotten about. I don't know, maybe this movement already exists. I don't have a cellphone so I'm not up on a lot of things.
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This comment has not yet been postedAlso, the need to have an AUDIENCE for every little thing you do is just pathetic.
I broke down and bought my first mobile phone 2 weeks ago, and it's this incredibly beautiful, sleek Android, but I don't really feel enriched by it. It's more of a necessity because of having elderly parents in poor health, so I just turn it on a couple of times a day to check messages.
The most fun I've had with it was choosing the font and wallpaper for it. Actually reading, say, the Huffington Post on it is a real pain.
Also, I'm a flight attendant, and the view we get of the public's addiction to their little devices is pretty disturbing. People can't comply with a simple request on a PA to turn OFF all their electronic devices AT PUSHBACK without being asked, individually, over and over, all day long (if you can get their earphones off long enough for them to hear you). And, of course, we're required to enforce this by the FAA, with the prospect of fines of thousands of dollars personally if we don't. I just walk through and ask, in as detached a way as possible, knowing I'm dealing with an addiction.
I also managed to raise a daughter who is NOT tethered to her phone, who is now 21.so apparently it can be done without fatalities...
We do not give out the number of this cell phone, as we usually have better things to do with our time than "chat." I am still capable of grocery shopping without having to use the phone. If someone needs to contact me, they do what they have always done: call me at home or work, which happens to be where I normally am 90% of the time.
It is amusing to watch what used to be considered rude behavior now considered normal, that is, spending time with someone who spends their time talking to someone else, having personal conversations in public, and playing with their toy at social gatherings.
In the frenzy to become socially connected, we have become more disconnected (no pun intended) than ever.
And I just HATE that when I say "hello" to someone at work or a coworker at the bus stop, I almost never get a "hello" back because they're tethered to their phones with buds in their ears.
Nobody speaks to each other, anymore.
I like having some dull mental-space while I'm waiting for the bus, or riding on the bus. It lets my brain daydream, plan, or just tune-out and recharge.
A few years ago, this lady's car hit an icy patch and went off the road. Her car got buried in the snow and she was unable to get the doors open. She was able to guide the police to her car, completely buried under. It took them a while to find her and she would not have lasted much longer in that freezer!
Ugh...Can you not even amuse yourselves for a bare few moments without harassing your friends to do it for you? Talk about a society-wide severe case of unhealthy co-dependency.
Maybe I'm just an introvert, but to me, unless you have some compelling and/or meaningful reason for disturbing someone, you shouldn't be doing it.
So folks, next time you want to pester those on your phone list, ask yourself a couple of questions: 1. "Would I go all the way over to their house and bother them in the middle of something, just to tell/ask them this?"
2. "If I did that, what would be the likely reaction?"
If there is a negative answer to either of these questions, then there is no reason to annoy someone you call a friend.
That people walk along talking on their phone, oblivious to traffic, and drive erratically in heavy traffic, or engage in loud discussions with the significant other in restaurants and in movie theaters has generally made the US a more irritating and bizarre place.
You are not alone! I cut myself away from the cell phone tether almost two years ago and have never had a moments regret. With me, the moment of clarity came when my friends would sit with me at a table texting as we had a conversation. At first I just stopped answering texts. I mean, if it is important enough that you need to tell me about it...CALL ME MAYBE? That little taste of freedom got the ball rolling. You are absolutely right about the absurdity of a cell phone being required to perform ones job. I do love to talk on the phone. I will sit at home and talk on the phone for hours! I am not a slave Our cell phone umbilical chord is nothing more than a symptom of people today believing we are way more important than we really are. I can so relate to where you are coming from because, by being tied to the cell phone, we truly are less connected to the world around us instead of more connected.