My Big Hang-Up
 
Two for $39.99. That was the best deal I was going to get on a watch from the Fossil outlet. On the whole, I guess that wasn’t really that bad of a price, but since I tend to destroy watches for some reason, I always hesitate when buying them at all, regardless of the price. I just have bad luck with watches.
 
Which might explain why I’d pretty much stopped wearing them. I mean, besides the fact that I didn’t have any left that had workable straps, still had good batteries, or didn’t have a cracked face. I’d actually convinced myself that I didn’t need to wear a watch because I usually had at least one cell phone on me somewhere, and I could always get the time from one of those.
 
It was right about then, as I stood in the watch store, that I realized that my cell phones were more of an encumbrance to me than actually being convenient – you know, the reason we’re supposed to have one in the first place.
 
(That wasn’t a typo back there – I actually have two cell phones. See, I’ve got my personal phone, the one that accounts for me not having to put up with the local phone company’s crap and have a land line. But I also have a phone through work, a Nextel, but get this – it only has the Direct Connect Two-Way service on it. No actual phone service or number. So I’m obliged to carry two phones around with me. Fun, huh?)
 
Maybe that’s what’s kind of lending itself to my whole thought that cell phones are more of an inconvenience than a help. Or maybe it’s the fact that I never seem to get calls on either of them in the first place. But regardless of how I personally look at it, take a look around you and note how cell phones have suddenly gone from boon to blight:
 
First off, the cell phone has done more to destroy common courtesy in our society than any other device invented in the late 20th Century. People use them at the most inopportune times, from the ongoing point that talking on the phone while driving has caused any number of accidents that shouldn’t have happened, to people taking or making calls while in line, say, at the bank. I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to recall a time when you were held up somewhere because someone was trying to have a phone conversation while trying to purchase something. It probably pissed you off, and I can guarantee it annoyed the daylights out of the worker trying to complete the sale.
 
Flip side of the coin – when not on their phones, people forget about them being on. As a result, we’re now obliged to deal with constant reminders at movies, live performances, and sadly now even church* for people to turn off their phones. And yet… there’s always a ring (or more commonly now, some obnoxious Ricky Martin song – also proving that rude people have no taste) going off right in the middle, isn’t there?
 
I can also point out that there’s a good chance that cell phones are helping to erode our ability to remember things. A hastily prepared case study** showed me that cell phone users are so at the mercy of their phone’s speed dial that they couldn’t remember, for example, their significant other’s phone number if they actually needed to call and didn’t have their phone. The opportunity to breed mental laziness is broad, especially when most phones can now track your daily calendars as well. You’re just one dead battery away from losing your brain, and not in that mythical Hitler’s-brain-in-a-jar-in-Paraguay sort of way.
 
Above all, though, it’s fair to say that the concept of the cell phone just hasn’t interacted well with American nature. I’ve noticed from my friends and co-workers that things like leaving their phone at home, or misplacing it, have a tendency to make cell phone wielders kind of… freak out. Maybe it’s the aforementioned lack of knowing any of the info you’ve got stored in the thing, but I really think we as a society have developed some kind of weird attachment to our mobile phones, like they’re some kind of lifeline. We’re obliged to take every call that comes in (although that may have more to do with Caller ID, and that it’s spawned some fear that people will think we’re just not taking their call because we see it’s THEM), and we get a little paranoid when we think we might miss one of those incoming calls. It was only ten years ago that missing calls was okay, because you weren’t home to answer your phone. But now, in that comparatively short time, we’ve trained ourselves that missing calls isn’t okay, because we’ve always got our phones.
 
So I’m going to try and wean myself from constantly carrying my cell with me. I think we all maybe need to let go a little. Leave it at home if you’re going out socially, or if you have to have it, keep it off. If you go long enough without the interruptions, you might even find that “personal interaction” has been calling you for a while, but you’ve been busy on the other line.

 
 
* One of the priests at the church I attend once announced before a service that people should turn off their cell phones, because God has better ways of talking to us. Ah, yes… pastoral humor. Someone’s phone rang 20 minutes later.
 
** The study consisted of two people, one of which may or may not have been me.

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Dustin Grovemiller thinks he's becoming something of a recluse. Prove to him he's wrong by sending him some email!