One Ringy-Dingy, or - Eristine gets the Cell Phone Blues

OK. I´m going to break all the rules of reader engagement and warn you in advance. This is a rant article. I´m familiar with ranting. Some of my best friends tell me I do it exceptionally well. Or at least exceptionally often. You´d think I´d learn about ranting...That most of mine are like tilting at windmills or doing "you know what" into the wind.

This rant is about cell phones. Well, not exactly cell phones but rather cell phone users. I know, I know. Absolutely nothing can be done about my rant. Cell phones are here to stay and like fire ants, they serve a purpose or they would not exist. Yes, it´s true, they are wonderful devices for emergencies in dark places and for breakdowns on lonely roads. And yes, they have added a degree of at least the sense of security to many people´s lives. I´ll even admit I would have killed for one years ago when my young family lived out in the country many miles from a store and my wife would turn me around when I arrived home from work to go back to the store for milk and bread. Yes, indeedie, a cell phone would have helped in those years. So it´s not even that idea that gets my shorts in a knot.

Frankly it´s the ill-mannered users I´d something like to strangle....we´ll not literally, of course. But I will admit to having fantasies of grabbing a cell from someone´s hand and lobbing it off the nearest bridge. But alas, I´m too civilized. And really, I don´t want to be beaten up by a deprived crazed cell phone addict or have to spend the night in jail. So I restrain my behavior - but not my thoughts.

Today was particularly bad. It began this morning during on-the-way to the office traffic. I was nearly run off the highway by some guy on a cell phone weaving in and out of his lane gesturing wildly with one had while holding a cell to his ear with the other. Maybe he was getting a verbal Dear John from a girlfriend. Maybe he had just been told his kid had been abducted from school. Maybe his wife told him she was less than satisfied by the night before. I don´t really know and in the words of Rhett Butler of Gone with The Wind fame, "Frankly, my dear, I don´t give a damn." My only concern was one of survival and getting around the idiot before he caused a major accident.

Then, getting on the elevator to go to my eight floor office, I get stuck with no less than three other people all yapping on cell phones at the same time. The doors closed before I could get off and by the time the elevator make it to my floor my blood pressure was just as high as my altitude.

I call this whole area of rant the "Having to deal with OPCs"....having to deal with other peoples conversations. You know, it´s everywhere. In the isles and checkouts at the grocery store, in church (not that I go there often), in doctor´s waiting rooms, in the men´s room for gosh sakes (I don´t know about the ladies bathrooms but I hear it´s the same -or worse), in the hallway outside my office. I´ve even considered putting up a sign on the wall next to my door, "This is not a phone booth!" But then I remembered a lot of folks would not know what a phone booth was.

I´ve heard more one sided arguments between lovers, spouses or whatever, more gory details about family surgeries and more information than I ever got from people in therapy. And I get all this while trying to sit peacefully on a bench at the mall when some cell phone junkie comes over and plunks down their behind and begins their yapping. In fact, I´m considering the possibility of re-entering the field of psychotherapy. This time, I´ll get two adjoining offices. Me in one and my client in the other. We´ll talk on our cell phones. Like that idea? Problem is, with the current crop of young folks, this would probably be an acceptable method. Next we could work at incorporating texting into office procedures.

Now before I go on and assuming you are still with me, let me say that from my observations, offensive and intrusive cell phone use occurs in all age groups. It´s not confined to the under thirty bunch. My generation is just as likely to be guilty and even more so as they all seem to be hard of hearing and use their old Ma Bell "telephone voice" making for great clarity I suspect even were I in the next county.

It all boils down to rudeness. People today just seem more rude than they use to. I know, that´s the old person in me talking. But it sure seems to be the case. I´ll just bet that if I were a smoker and lit up a cigarette in a restaurant, I´ll be attacked by a bunch claiming I had no right to expose them to my second hand smoke. But let them pollute my air with their cell phone chatter and my only option is ear plugs. It ain´t fair, now is it?

Some users who´s answer to the question "Can you hear me now" must be "Well, not to good". They talk very loudly on their cells often just inches from your ears in public situations…..But if you look at´em, they act as if you´ve opened the door while there sitting on the potty. Like it's you who is being rude. Can you believe it. For gosh sakes don´t they know they can be heard a football field away. It ain´t exactly a private conversation they´re having in the in the middle of the shampoo isle at K-Mart.

I should have guessed all this was coming. Several years ago when cells where just breaking onto the scene, I found myself next to a woman (could have as easily been a man) talking on a cell phone doing what I soon came to call "remote shopping". This is were some lazy butt sits at home giving shopping directions to the person on the other end who actually made the effort to get out of the house and physically do something. As the shopper prowls through stuff, the conversation might go something like this, but remember you only get one side of it. "Now honey, what color did you say? And what size do you think your pants are. Oh, a 38? (to themselves probably… "Yea right….. in your dreams my couch potato sweetheart"). Well, it´s only gotten worse since then.

Like I said at the beginning. This is just a rant. Nothing to be done. But I refuse to carry a tazer. Too much temptation. I have considered ordering a hand-held cell-phone jammer, however. They are illegal here in the US about the same way radar detectors are in many states…. But hey, with the Internet you can place your order from China. They´ll sell you anything, even your next cell phone.

Postscript:

Sometime in the distant future, a parent takes their teenager on a day trip to a cultural museum is some as yet unmanned city. They will stroll through the exhibits. Stopping at one, the mother or father will explain to the young one at their side what it is they see behind the glass enclosed, hermetically sealed case:

It´s a full size mockup with a life like wax human figure inside and a partially constructed recreation of a house interior like you might see in a stage play. The wax figure is a woman dressed in 1950s style clothing (or so says the label on the case) who sits on a piece of furniture that seems to combine a seat and a small table. It´s at the foot of some stairs going up and nearby to what might be the front door to the home. In her hand is a large black device like a thick rod with round ends. She holds one end to her ear so that the other end is in front of her mouth. The devise is connected by a black cord to another piece of equipment sitting on the small table next to her seat. Yet another black cord runs from that down and into a connector attached to the wall. This large and heavy looking device has a circular center dial of some sort and, if you look closely, it has holes around its circumference with numbers appearing underneath. She looks happy and seems to be talking to someone.

"Hey dad. What´s she doing? What´s that in her hand?" asks the youngster. "Well son," the dad explains, "Years ago before people had a BlueEar inserted in their brain right after birth, they had to use these old fashion things called telephones to talk to each other when they weren´t together in the same place. You had to go to where one of those things was attached by a cord to the wall and sit down and actually think about who it was you were talking to on the other end of the telephone line. Do you remember learning about cell phones in history class son? Well these were even earlier versions but with wires! Can you imagine? If someone called you and you answered, they knew exactly were you were. They knew where the telephone was and knew you could not be anywhere but there. Wasn´t that strange. "Sorry Dad" the youngster chimes in "Can we talk about this later? My BlueEar just beeped" catch you later. "Hey Bill, guess where I am" the dad hears his son say as he drifts off to the next exhibit.

Hey, don´t laugh. It could happen.

End of rant.