Cell Phones and Cigarettes
Does it seem like everyone on campus is talking on, pretending to be talking on, texting, blogging, or creating alternate atmospheres on their cell phone? Well, that is because they are. Just from my own estimation and far from a scientific study, I concluded, while walking in the Union toward Woodward, that 7 out of ten people were in some way using their cell phones.
I know, I know, so what, right? Wrong. The fact is cell phones are the new cigarettes, the status quo for looking not so isolated or unimportant. Walk out of class with nothing to do? Grab your cell phone and check the time. Just park your car? Send a quick text to your friend about the super cool thing that happened last night in front of Moe’s. Standing alone in between classes? Call an old friend and have a ten-minute-power-chat. And the thing is, no one finds it odd, not even a little bit. In fact, reading this article probably seems stranger than 70 percent of students walking on campus while caressing cell phones.
But remember the 20th Century. That old Y2K thing and the Apocalypse sure seem like so long ago now that we have $600 game consoles, PDA’s that fold out into keyboards, and voice activated dialing systems. However, I remember my first cell phone. It was fresh, cool and it made me somebody, even though I carried it around in a bag. It seems like forever ago, the days of Mike Jordan and the Backstreet Boys, before things were ‘tight’ and ‘true.’
What concerns me most is the fact that I cannot even function without my cell phone. For example, I had a meeting the other night and was dropped off by my girlfriend due to the fact that Pontiac makes poor vehicles, and unbeknownst to me I had left my ‘celly’ under the pillow at my ‘crib.’ So after the meeting I reached for my empty pocket to discover that indeed, no mobile, as the Brits call it. Yet to panic, I calmly strolled toward the payphone, swiped my Visa Checkcard and began to dial. But then it hit me, like a jump kick from Tony Jaa, I realized my memory had been replaced by a SimCard and millions of digits.
My mind was blank.
I felt abandoned and alone. My heart raced with a sense of desperation that I could only imagine those Survivor folks feel. I tried desperately to remember anyone’s number but nothing came. So I did what any red-blooded American man would do, I walked home. A shameful stride of self-deprecation and foolhardy pride while I tried to keep my head up and my eyes dry.
When I got home I sat down at my laptop and connected to my Comcast high-speed Internet. Without a landline or a kind neighbor willing to lend me their phone without a snide remark to the tune of, “What, you don’t have a cell phone?” I was forced to log on to the pervasive peer gathering called Facebook. From there I found an old friend online whom I had not spoken with since leaving Michigan some two years ago.
After snatching his AIM screename, I sent him a message asking him to call my girlfriend and tell her to come pick me up from my house. And then, of course, I asked him how he was doing and told him to say hello to his mother for me. I finished up with, “I’ll call you when I get my cell back, take care.”
The world is so connected these days it is frightening. Cell phones truly are the must have accessory for the 21st Century like cigarettes were in the early 1900’s. Our culture and our economy depend on this level of connection every day. Cell numbers are forgotten because they are never learned, but stored in a microchip covered in plastic. Entire nation’s economies collapse because of the information overload and the easiness in which capital can move throughout the globe.
The things that make life easier are sometimes the things that we take for granted and when they are gone, we are simply forced to walk home.
Leave a Reply