My girlfriend and I were up past 1:00 a.m. on a week night last week, as lovebirds sometimes are. Billing. Cooing. Whispering sweet nothings to each other. Or rather, beeping sweet nothings AT each other, because we were in the middle of activating our new cell phones.
Yes, that’s right - I have a cell phone. I honestly never thought it would happen and I’m sure that those of you who know me are shocked and surprised. “Don’t call me on your cell phone! I feel like I have to yell all the time! Are you calling from inside a cement mixer? Jesus!” When out and about, I routinely turned down offers to use a friend’s cellphone to make a call, opting instead to pay a quarter and use a payphone that was probably licked by someone only minutes before.
I trace my cellphone prejudice back to the early ’90s, when my mom, who was trying to start a business where clients might need to reach her at any time of the day or night, brought a cellphone into our home. The thing was the size of a brick and came with a handy leather strap and carrying caddy so that you could swing it from your wrist like a bracelet. A bracelet made of brick. The kind of bracelet the mob might attach to your feet before dropping your body off the pier. This type of phone made a memorable appearance in one of the later episodes of the X-Files. The episode was set in the late 80’s and Mulder nearly cripples himself running after the bad guy with one of these giant phones banging his ass with every step. Hilarious. Because it’s true.
I was painfully phone shy as a young person and didn’t like answering the phone - as most of you know, I still don’t. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to YOU - it’s just that I don’t want to talk at all and if I don’t feel like chatting, wouldn’t you rather I didn’t answer the phone? I thought so. My mom’s cellphone added a whole other dimension of angst to phone answering - if the monolith sputtered to life when no one was around, it was my job to pick it up. It often took several piercing rings for me to heft the brick up off the table and a few more to figure out which button to push to answer the phone and then there was the dread of who might be calling. My mom’s business at the time mainly involved people who were calling to plan their funerals, so I never knew if I was going to get someone who was chipper yet terminally ill and planning their funeral ahead of time, or someone whose loved one had just passed, or my mother calling to check that her phone was working. Often, it was just a wrong number, so I would hang up and have a little cry while I struggled to pop my shoulder back into its socket.
All of this begs the question - why did I even GET a cellphone? If I don’t like to talk on them or receive calls on them or turn them on, why even bother? And by the way, don’t I work at home? Well, guys, I don’t know what to tell you - I guess that in this case, desire outweighed logic. Katr was getting a cool new phone and, like my friend Amwe’s Strawberry Shortcake collection in grade school, I wanted one too. My new phone is sleek and stylish, with enough weight to it that I won’t put it in my pocket and forget about it, but not so heavy that I can use it to work out with. I can yell “Donut!” at it and it will dial Donut’s number. And the coolest thing about it - the absolute coolest - can be summed up in two little words: txt messaging.
I may never actually talk on the phone again.
Comments:
I don’t really know about the joys of text messaging. One time I got a text message in the middle of the night and I panicked because my phone was making weird noises and I woke up dreaming that I was on a heart monitor and everyone was mocking me for my freakish arrhythmia, while I was DYING. I hear most people have a good time with it, but a word of caution which may be grounded in fact or may be an urban legend: I’ve heard there are people who develop tendonitis in their thumbs from excessive texting.
But I understand and say cheers to not picking up when you’re not feeling like it. These days, largely due to work, I loathe the sound of the phone ringing to the point where I regularly change the ring on my cell phone to try to trick my brain into not cringing when it goes off. Don’t get me wrong. I like talking on the phone to people. On my home phone. If I know who’s calling (yay for caller ID). And I’m in the mood. And it’s not my job, or a financial institution to which I owe money. (E.g., the student loan service centre calling for the 48th time in a week, I guess hoping to catch me “off guard” to rail at me for the 57 cents that I’m allegedly short after they cheat me on the exchange rage for my student loan repayments. Well, there was this one time I found myself wishing I answered the phone more often because the flunkie who drew my number for the evening, when asked how it was possible for the bank to have “lost” my checks for a month during which I was harassed daily by my phone ringing (not that I answered it, because yay for caller ID), told me: “Umm, well, because of terrorism? Sometimes they hold up envelopes now, eh? At the border? In Customs. Especially if they have checks in them.” Which gave me a good hearty laugh. Because terrorists are well known to fund their evil enterprises by masquerading as banks and student loan repayment centres in Saskatchewan.)
Anyway, here’s a good site for you if you want to text more with less effort: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp
L8R. MTFBWU.*
P.S. I didn’t just add the “eh” for requisite Canadian prairie colour in the anecdote about the student loan centre flunkie. He totally said it. And it was probably for the best, because it made me less mad that he was blaming terrorism for the misplacement of my checks.
*may the force be with you
Comment by Chezza — Tuesday, June 14, 2005 @ 1:40 am
Hey you! Roro! When do us peons get the new cell number to harass you with text messages?
Actually, don’t expect much from me on that end. Babeed sent me a text message every day while I was away at musicfest, and I maybe replied to the kind soul twice. I’m mean that way.
PS Can we please hang out soon? I promise not to play Whitesnake.
Comment by E-dawg — Tuesday, June 14, 2005 @ 8:30 am
All in good time, E-Dawg, all in good time. I need to spend some quality time on that texting abbreviation site first and then download a Whitesnake ringtone.
Comment by Rose — Tuesday, June 14, 2005 @ 4:05 pm
What’s your number?
Comment by Lady Marianna — Wednesday, June 29, 2005 @ 8:55 pm