Prisoner Cell Block 3G

Today the Pirate Queen left her cell phone at home.  A forgotten cell phone at home required that we meet up over lunch so I could give it to her.  (The phone, pervs. We all know it’s a Monday. All my other giving duties are done until next week.)

When I was a kid my dad never met up with my mom to give her anything other than extra keys, if she’d locked hers inside the car.

“Hello?”

“Honey, I left the phone at home.”

“Well it is attached to the wall with a cord. I sort of expected that you would leave it at home.”

“Well yes…  Could you meet me at home so I can pick it up?”

“Well OK…”

That conversation never took place between my parents. Why? Cell phones didn’t exist when I was a kid.  If I wanted to make a call away from home, I needed a dime for the payphone.  If I wanted to play video game away from my Atari, I needed a quarter.  That was life in the Corded Age.

Quick poll:

Will everybody without a cell phone please repeat after me:  “I am a compulsive liar.”

The rest of you: How many of you have home phones anymore?

No.  Me neither.

The last one I had was 5 years ago. I offered to give it up in the divorce, but neither of us wanted it. Home phones have gone the way of the Pitfall Harry. 

Remember when cordless phones were all the rage?  You had the range of about 2 rooms before it started to sound like an AM radio…Ok, do I have to explain AM to you as well? And no, not the time of day (I have no concept of that am).  AM was a type of radio signal.  It still exists today, seriously, check your car stereo. It’s that button you never press. No, not “CASSETTE.”

Sigh...

This isn’t a nostalgic blog.  I’m not trying to relive the past. I’m merely failing to take you back to a time without cell phones. 

“…for these are more easily acquired than to get rid of..” – Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau wasn’t talking about cell phones, but if he were around in this cell tower millennia, he’d have wept Walden tears, because nothing so seemingly untethered has ever imprisoned us so willingly.

There’s nothing we can’t do with our cell phones:

Pay bills.

Deposit checks.

Play games.

Take Pictures.

Make phone calls!

Leave them at home--Oh wait, we can’t do that anymore.

So much more than a phone: Nobody phones anymore. It's all about icon driven app-itecture. How many of the apps can you name that are represented by these icons? Answer at the bottom of the post.

You know what’s funny though? Nobody makes phone calls these days. If I were to make up a statistic about that, it would look like this:

“75% of the things we do on our phones don’t include phone calls.”-Imaginary Statistics Weekly.

Even kids don’t phone anymore: they text. They send abbreviated words so they don’t have to face rejection.

See? Cell phones eliminate confrontation. We don’t talk to people. We key a few words, and send them off. Problem solved.  Need proof? How many of your Facebook friends do you really know? How many have actually heard your voice within the past six months? Ever?

We like our cell phones because they allow us isolation. Cell phones are this millenniums’ bubble wrap.  Interesting side note, had bubble wrap existed, it is the one material item that would have snared Thoreau away from Walden.

“One generation abandons the enterprises of an other like—Oooh! Bubble wrap!”

Cell phones are our way of abandoning the previous generations dreams to be free and trading them in for a two-year contract and an icon driven life of isolation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we toss them in the bay like AT&T tea. Right now my cell phone is so close that I can pinky flick the unlock bar while typing. I’m trapped behind reception bars, just like everybody else.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  The phone is nothing more than a tool. We just need to make the effort to communicate and open up to the world around us. So let’s do that. Everybody, do me a favor right now.  Put down your smart phone that you’re reading this blog on and turn to the person to your left and say, “Hi! Your zipper’s down, and I like that about you.”

And that, my friends, shall set you free.


App answer. Left to right,  Row 1: Miami Dolphins Team app, Pandora, Solebon Solitaire, Urban Spoon, Sudoku, Remote, Twitter, Row 2: Career Builder,  Ease into 5K, Chase, Minesweeper 2, Wordfeud, Angry Birds. Row 3: Skype, Trip Advisor, Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery, Bump, Flashlight, Indeed, Twitterific. Row 4: Lil' Pirates, 8500+ Drinks and Cocktails, Checkers Free, Crowd Beacon, Nike +, Nook, Fandango. Row 5: Weather Doodle, Retro Pinball, Hulu Plus, Orbitz, Blogger, Soundtracking, Kobo. Row 6: TuneIn Radio, Go Daddy, Bejeweled, Good Reads, Ancestry, Touch Tunes, Kayak. Row 7: Vevo, Monster.com, Yellow Pages, Acrobat, Bible Gateway, Pocket Planes, Klout. Row 8: Starmap, Alarm Clock, Errands To-do list, QR Reader, TiVo, Realtor.com, Delta Airlines.