The other day I was talking with a friend about the apartment I recently moved into. The new place needed a few things before it truly felt like home, I said: a few area rugs, some light fixtures and perhaps some manner of pirate flag to fly from the front porch. Most importantly, I told her, I needed to have a phone line installed.
\Why would you need that?"" she asked.
""So I can order Chinese food without having to put on pants,"" is the obvious reply, but I responded in a more general way about my occasional need to contact people some distance away in an immediate fashion.
Trying to be helpful, she asked the question I always dread: ""Why don't you just use your cell phone?""
Answer: I still don't own a cell phone.
My friend was shocked and appalled; on campus, lacking a cell phone is a shameful taboo and an admission of technological inferiority. Socially speaking, I'm a caveman with a scarlet letter ""A"" emblazoned on my loincloth.
How could I not have a cell phone? Well, for one thing, between land phone lines, the internet and specially trained carrier pigeons, I'm fairly sure I don't actually need one. True, people cannot always get a hold of me when I am out, but they assume this lack of contact means I am very busy with important collegiate-type things, whereas I am actually at a karaoke bar performing an unsettling rendition of The Divinyls' ""I Touch Myself.""
More importantly, however, I don't want a cell phone. This statement, I'm sure, is even more heretical to the hardened cellular-slinger, but think about it: When the subject of your phone comes up in conversation, you never say, ""My heavens, what a convenient, reliable, easy-to-use device; I'm glad I have one."" No; when speaking of your cell phone, you use a scornful tone usually reserved for unrepentant child molesters. You complain about dwindling minutes, stupid service providers and that you don't have enough ""bars."" (Whenever I hear about a shortage of ""bars"" in Madison, I usually presume the complaining individual is not really looking very hard.)
Furthermore, the large, brick-sized Zack Morris model cell phone of yesteryear has been replaced by a tiny handheld unit. This supposedly makes them more convenient to carry, but my friends are now constantly losing their phones in cars, seat cushions and the bellies of small dogs.
And, of course, there's the matter of the chap who's forgotten to turn his cell phone off before class started. When I started college three years ago, ringtones were little more than a collection of semi-melodic beeps: annoying, but possible to ignore when they went off mid-lecture. Now they're so elaborate that I hear one and wonder who brought MarioKart to class. Very soon, ringtone technology will advance to the point where your agriculture lecture will be interrupted every seven minutes by the London Symphony Orchestra heralding a call from someone's aunt.
I realize in saying this that I sound like a crotchety old technophobe, but I don't care: It truly seems to me that the supposed ""convenience"" of a cell phone is actually a counterproductive hassle and nuisance, solving one problem but causing several more. I therefore refuse to give into peer pressure and shall march proudly, cell phone-less, rallying 'round my righteous song:
""I love myself, I want you to love me / When I feel down, I want you above me...""
Justin Zyduck doesn't have a cell phone and isn't going to give you his home phone number either. Contact him at morrisonbass@yahoo.com.
