The Cellular Scourge

I’ve come to despise cell phones. If I could only get rid of mine… I hate it. I never really much liked them when they started becoming commonly available. My husband cannot stand to be without them. He says that if we have to commute as far as we do on a daily basis, that we should have them in case of a breakdown or other unforeseen situation. I can see where he’s coming from; but they never quite end up being used just for emergencies. They just become a human Lojack.

I’m a fairly independent soul. I am not too keen on being phoned constantly and asked; “so where are you?” I also am not a big telephone person to begin with. I tend to start segueing people off the phone the moment I start the telephone conversation with them. I don’t like long chats on the phone. There are few people I can claim are capable of keeping me on the phone for long. Then all of a sudden, I’m carrying this phone around with me 24/7 and that means that anyone can call me at any time.

Hubby always gives his cell phone numbers to his grandmother and then complains about how often she calls him on it. My solution is to not give her the number; but he simply cannot do that. He wants her to be able to reach him anytime in case of an emergency; however with Grandma, a desperate need for KFC chicken could constitute an emergency. I haven’t given my cell number to my mother. I haven’t given it out to anyone except those who 1) I trust not to annoy me constantly with phone calls while I’m driving and 2) people who I need to have contact with like ORS helpers and such. Other than that, my phone rarely rings unless it’s from hubby or a wrong number (which has been happening a lot lately).

This morning, I was behind a guy in a large vehicle. He was driving in erratic spurts… accelerating, decelerating, poking along, swerving… why? Because he was putzing around with his cell phone. It was irritating the heck out of me. Friday, we went to see Indiana Jones, and there was a large group of teens in the theatre, and through the whole movie, my eyes were distracted by the glowing screens of cell-phones while the little jerks texted their way through the film—they also were coming and going throughout the movie to make and receive calls. I see kids texting while driving all the time. I really wish I had some steel bars around my car so I could just ram them off the road and out of the way. Stupid, stupid kids. Why do kids have cell phones anyway? They don’t need them. My generation survived well enough without texting capabilities.

In public places, I am party to conversations I don’t want to hear. Teen drama, adult arguments, the mind-numbing minutiae of someone’s life being discussed over Bluetooth… It’s like auditory pollution. At sushi the other day, there was a really adorable looking teenaged girl behind me in line. By the time I got to the counter I was having fantasies of inflicting bloody violence upon her. “Oh my god…. Tooootally… yeah, he did. And then he turned around and said something, and I was like… you did not just say something … so I totally went off on him… Yeah, no, totally… I just lost it… I was like who do you think you are? You have no idea who I am and….” I think jamming a chopstick in my eye would be more pleasant than listening to her go on and on and on and on and on.

Cellulars are the scourge of the earth. I’ve decided this.