If Bill Gates had invented the telephone, the user's manual would be twice as thick as the phone book and we'd all be busy rebooting 14 times a day. Fortunately, Alexander Graham Bell took a more user-friendly approach, which means that phones are things that even preschoolers can use with ease. And they do. There was the time my oldest, then three, managed to get hold of the phone upstairs and hit the pound key several times, just to see what happened. What happened is that it activated the "panic button" on our burglar alarm. Three county police cars showed up, and the cops in them were not amused. Another morning, several years later, I got a call from my husband, who was at his office. "Do you know where your cellphone is?" "Why?" I asked. He had just picked up his cellphone and, hearing soft little pants on the other end, thought at first he had a very shy phone sex lady on his hands. Then another thought occurred.... Sure enough, I went looking and found my youngest perched halfway up the stairs, having just figured out the speed dial function. Then there was the time I left my cellphone on "vibrate" and sat it on my desk. My husband called me while I was, mentally speaking, about 4,000 miles away--and suddenly this black metallic thing is buzzing and crawling towards me. I haven't been so terrified since the night I walked through a darkened living room and found Crawling Minnie Mouse slowly working her way across the carpet, lights glowing and a little singsong voice emanating from her batteries. I'm surprised the neighbors did not hear the screams. Actually, I'm surprised my heart is still beating.
My problem with cellphones, aside from the fact that they can scare the living crap out of you, is that they keep getting smaller and smaller, which means the little buggers get easier and easier to lose. If you're quick on the uptake, and act before the batteries run out, you can call yourself on a land line and just follow the ringy dingy...at least until the answering service, which you so efficiently signed up for, cuts it off. My cellphone gets four rings before the answering service kicks in. One day I lost my cellphone and, using the Calling Yourself method, tracked it down to the west half of the house...and then it quit. Went back, dialed again, raced back to where I'd been before, figured out the sound was probably coming from my office--and then it quit. Went into my office, dialed again, and....the sound was fainter. Hmmmmm. Dialed again, went into the hall: louder. But WHERE? Dialed again. This time the noise was coming from...BEHIND the toilet. No, it was not I who left it there.
Now the latest thing are these little thingys you can just attach to your ear, like something out of Star Trek--a phenomenon which led recently to an item in the Washington Post describing a fight in a local nightclub which began when one man greeted another who was wearing one of those earphone thingys with the line, "How you doin', my Vulcan brother?" Now I thought that was funny, but Vulcan Brother didn't: he beat the shit out of the guy who was trying to be friendly, leading to a) a short hospital stay for the wiseacre and b) a longer sojourn in jail for Vulcan Brother. I say, if you don't want to hear cracks like that, don't wear weird metallic things sprouting from your ears. I am always amazed that anyone would be interested in becoming a walking phone accessory, but not only are people doing this in droves, some of them are actually wiring themselves up so that all incoming calls are automatically answered. This means that while you're talking to them you never know when you're going to get bounced, so to speak, for an urgent request for advice from the girlfriend standing in front of the shoe rack at Nordstrom's. It's gotten so that when you're cruising the produce aisle and somebody nearby suddenly says "Hey!", all friendly, you can no longer assume they are talking to you; they are just as likely to be talking to their insurance adjustor on the other side of town. I find this whole phenomenon baffling, and more than a little frightening. I know people who take serious psychotropic meds to keep strange voices OUT of their heads, but I know even more people who pay big bucks to actually pipe them in. Who is crazier? To me, this is a no-brainer.
The only thing more frightening to contemplate--and you know this is coming--is hoardes of teenagers roaming the malls, Bluetooths attached to the sides of their heads, mouths in constant motion. They will all be talking to each other...on the phone. Your teenager will be all over you like white on rice to get the same thing. You will have two choices: give in, or move to Amish country, where they allow phones but keep them in a special little shed separate from the house. I know where I'm going.