I've always had cell phones. My friend and I talked to each other through Dixie cups with a string attached. "Roger, mission control, we have the moon rocks!" My sister would say, "You guys are so stupid. You can hear each other without the cups." Maybe she is hearing us through the cups and she just doesn't know it?
At 12, I got a pair of walkie-talkies. Girls at the playground would laugh at us as we played army with them. "We are being flanked from the right, sir. Cover your men!" We would hit the Morse code beeper button when we ran out of things to say, kind of like today when you want to get off the cell. "I'm losing you. I'm near the airport. Click!" Sometimes we would sit in our bedrooms at night and flash our flashlights out the windows to each other in Morse code. Nobody understood just how fun that was.
As a 16-year-old I got a CB radio in my car just like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. I talked on that thing all the time. "That's a big ten four. You're talking to the French Connection. Over and out!" Truckers wished that doggone movie had never come out so they could hear something other than 40-million dopes driving around in Pintos, pretending to be truckers. My girlfriend would put on K.C. and the Sunshine Band while I tried to hear the CB radio, "That's the way, uh huh, uh huh . . . I like it . . . uh huh, uh huh!" Who wants to listen to music when you can talk to a complete stranger?
Today everybody has a cell phone, but it's not like the Jetsons. George Jetson would never complain about using too many minutes. His daughter Judy would have given him cardiac arrest with her cell phone bill.
We have a family plan. My family talks while I plan to work overtime to pay for it. You go out and meet people and nobody has anything to say in person. A cell phone goes off and that same person who had nothing to say sounds like they just got back from a world tour with Mick Jagger.
My CB radio with no antenna in my Gremlin 20 years ago had better reception than my cell phone today. I know I heard the Apollo astronauts talking to Houston on the moon more clearly than my mom today right down the street.
If I walk into any building made with an ounce of metal, my signal goes to zero. This is the time of day when my wife can't reach me on my ball and chain. I have to document this time for when I'm crossed-examined at home later for clearance to the bedroom.
I like people who answer their cell phones just to say, "I can't talk now, I'll call you back!" Just don't answer it! I usually assume when people don't answer their phones they're busy. You can too!
I get calls from fax machines on my cell. Who do you call to get a fax machine to stop calling you? Some day when it's really slow, I will hook up my phone to a fax machine and wait for that daily fax call and see what it wants. Maybe it's my old friend trying to reach me again in Morse code.
I dig the replacement covers they sell for the cell phones. All different colors, team logos, that's cool! I wish they'd had Scooby Doo Dixie cups back in my day. Everyone would have assumed you were a drugged out hippie if you said: "Thanks for letting me use your phone. How do I use it?"
