Cell phone Saga.

(Original Post: October 2, 2006 - Monday)

My phone battery is almost dead. I don't want to recharge it. We are too easy to access these days. What about the days when you didn't have a piece of electronics attached to your ear, JIC (Just In Case) someone wanted to call you. And what does anyone have to say these days that can't wait? Typical Phone Call:"Hey, What's up? It's Chris."
"Yeah, I know, I've got caller ID on my cell phone and a picture of you comes up when you call so I know which Chris it is. How are you?"
"I"m good."
"Yeah, me too."
"Did you have a good day at work?"
"Yeah, you were there. You asked me how I was and how my day was going and I said fine. It hasn't changed in the past 12 minutes."
"Alright cool. Well I just called to say Hi."
"Hi."
"I'll call you later."
"I can hardly fucking wait."
"See you at work tomorrow."
"Awesome. Why don't you call me before I get in?"
"Will do."
"Bye."
Most of my conversations are done out of guilt. That's right. You have a cell phone. You have free minutes. You have a phone book full of what you've grown to consider 'close friends.' Yet you never call them. So now we use these numbers to call our 'friends' when we are: A. Waiting for someone else to call us. B. Waiting in line somewhere. C. Driving long distances.
When I was a kid I couldn't wait to get on the phone. Grounding me consisted of not letting me watch TV or talk on the phone. And I was FUCKING PISSED. TV was no big deal...but NO PHONE! I would love to just throw the phone out the window and never look back. But we've become dependent. We NEED the phone. We need that useless conversation. At least when our phone was in our home we could convince ourselves that we had friends, they would just call when we weren't home. Then answering machines came out. So we would just convince ourselves that our friends were too cool to leave messages. Now we have a device that we bring around with us wherever we go. They tell us to turn it off in the movie theater, but no one does. They just put in on vibrate. No one wants to miss a call. And if no one calls. Then no one cares. And now you carry around that tiny little device that taunts you with its silence. And when it does ring you look around. Pretty proud of yourself for having a friend. But you know what it really means. Someone is on a road trip.