Guest Column

You may be incommunicado if you leave home without it

By MARY PARTINGTON
Published July 12, 2007

This is my nightmare come true. I have seen this in vivid color off and on for as many years as I can remember, only this time I am fully clothed.

I need to make a phone call and I go from pay phone to pay phone trying desperately to find one that works. Finally, I find one that takes my phone card and I input the numbers and the message resounds in my ear, "Your card has expired." I try again, the machine accepts my four quarters and my party answers my call and I hear a loud screeching sound and the person I have called cannot hear me.

I would scream but I can't because I am in a crowded airport terminal and I know if I screamed hundreds would join me because they are as frustrated as I am. It is five minutes past the time printed on my boarding pass for the plane to leave Atlanta and I and 100 other passengers are wondering if we are doomed to wander this terminal forever.

You may wonder why I am traveling without a cell phone. Well, that is another story in itself. We were in California to maintain home and hearth while our son takes a well-deserved vacation. Being a modern household in California, there is no land line phone, only cell phones. Everyone has one. This way you can call someone using the shower upstairs to come down for breakfast. I carry a cell phone but my beloved does not care for them, which means we have only one. All my numbers are stored in my phone including the cell phone number of the party picking me up at the airport.

At some point in our stay my phone ceases to function and all the information it contains is lost. I buy a new phone and am reconnected to the world. This is all good until the time I have to return to Florida because I have an important meeting. My husband is staying behind to wait for the return of our son. He needs the phone and we debate buying another.

I won't need a phone. I can always use a pay phone. Wrong!

I now find myself in the Atlanta airport unable to communicate with the persons picking me up in Tampa. I had spoken to them the day before and they were to check the airline Web site to see if the flight is on time. But I want to communicate with them and I can't.

I had arrived in Atlanta on time with one hour between planes. I think the powers that be study the layout of the airport and find the farthest gate to send passengers. There are five terminals at different levels and it is maddening to get from one terminal to another.

I reached the gate printed on my ticket and luckily found a seat. People are everywhere, the food purveyors have long lines. I had stopped just long enough between gates to buy a frozen ice cream sandwich, which is a mess of melted mush that oozes out of the package as I try to open it.

The first inkling of something wrong is when I see another mass of humanity surging toward our gate. A voice washes over the mass stating that my plane is now going to leave from another gate. Picking up and wiping off, I run to the new gate only to find that plane is leaving for another place and no person at the gate knows what is going on.

This is the stuff of nightmares. I am alone and no way to communicate. Finally, after three banks of phones, I find one that accepts a credit card and I call my ride to inform them I will be late. They promise they will be at there to pick me up.

When I arrive in Tampa and enter the terminal I feel like kissing the ground. The airport is shining clean and empty. It is after midnight. You can hear the footfalls of the weary passengers and you can hear the voices connecting with their cell phones. My ride shows up as I retrieve my luggage and I am saved from another pay phone nightmare.

As she walks toward me I could dance with joy and I promise myself I will never leave home without a cell phone.

Love them or hate them there is a time and place for everything.

Mary Partington lives in New Port Richey

[Last modified July 11, 2007, 22:48:17]