For years I resisted buying a cell phone. As near as I could tell, it was just a very long leash. If I carried one I could never be alone or out of reach. In a moment of weakness, I succumbed and, to my surprise … I found out I was right all along.
A trip to the store confirmed my suspicions.
At my wife’s request, I stopped to buy coffee creamer. Whistling a cheery tune, I breezed past the baskets and carts – no need for them since I was only getting one item – and strode to the dairy case at the back of the store. A moment later, creamer in hand, I headed for the check-out.
A tinny, electronic version of a Bach fugue interrupted my whistling. My wife called to say, “Could you also pick up a gallon of milk?”
Sure. No sweat. I pivoted like an NBA All-Star and scurried back the way I’d come. Creamer in one hand, milk in the other, I headed for the check-out.
Another ring, another request; eggs.
It was a moment of decision. Go to the front for a basket or try to balance the creamer, milk and eggs? I opted for the balancing act.
The phone rang again. I dropped the creamer and entertained other customers by fumbling the egg carton, catching it just before it splattered on the floor.
“Cheese,” my wife said. I asked if there was anything else on the list and was assured that creamer, milk, eggs and cheese would been enough.
I should have been so lucky. For the next fifteen minutes I marched back-and-forth like a duck in a shooting gallery alternately collecting groceries and dashing to get to the check-out before the phone rang. In the end I had thirteen things – one too many for the twelve-items-or-less express lane – including eggs, cheese, milk, hot dogs, hot dog buns, relish, pickles, potato chips (the natural kind, not the ones with ridges), butter, popcorn (the microwave kind, but not that brand that always burns), sunburn cream, hair-dye (Chestnut Passion shade number four) and a feminine hygiene product I’d rather not mention. In all of the excitement, I misplaced the creamer.
I grew to hate the sound of that Bach fugue.
Which is why it is vitally important that you pick just the right ringtone. You’ll probably be hearing it a lot. Especially when you’re playing a rousing game of “Hunt the Cell Phone”.
“Hunt the Cell Phone” is easy. Someone (designated the “loser”) loses the phone. Then you dial your own number (it helps to have another phone at this point) and everyone in the house guesses where the ringtone is coming from.
“Under the couch?”
”The linen closet?”
”The toilet tank?”
“The roof?”
“Hunt the Cell Phone” can also be initiated by complete strangers. In one memorable game, my wife and I were staying in a hotel and she had left her phone in our suitcase.
Someone dialed it at one a.m. We stumbled out of bed and thumped around the hotel room like drunken grizzlies awakened during hibernation season. We got the suitcase opened just as the phone stopped ringing. The log showed a number we didn’t recognize. I resisted the urge to call back and say “Thank-you” because it might have come out as a different two-word phrase.
Why couldn’t my wife have left her phone in silent mode? Instead of being jolted violently awake by electronic Beethoven, we’d have been disturbed into consciousness by an angry buzz like an electric razor possessed of an evil spirit.
It’s not like my wife doesn’t know how to use the silent mode. Once, in a meeting, she switched her phone to silent and slipped it into her back pocket. It went off and startled her so badly she jumped up and shouted. So much for using the silent mode to avoid disrupting the meeting.
Worse yet, it was another wrong number.
When they’re not annoying, wrong numbers can be creepy.
My cell phone rang unexpectedly one Saturday afternoon. I didn’t recognize the out-of-state number on the screen.
“Hello?”
”It’s me,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “I have the cover off, but there aren’t any blinking lights.”
“Um…I think you have the wrong number.”
“This isn’t Mr. Popkin?”
“No.”
“Sorry.” Click!
After she hung up I thought, Gee, I hope she wasn’t disarming a bomb. Should I call her back to find out what happened? What if I didn’t get an answer? Why did I suddenly feel responsible for her? After all, she was the one who called me.
Maybe it was because it was possible that she didn’t have the wrong number. With so many people buying phones, sooner-or-later you’ll wind up with some other person’s number.
When I first broke down and got a phone, it came with a number that had belonged to a Sergeant Honeycutt. People called all the time asking for him. I started to wish I was him because he had a lot more friends than I did.
Maybe Sergeant Honeycutt was younger than me and closer to my sons’ generation. Far from thinking of themselves as leashed, these kids embrace their electronic captivity. Any quiet moment finds them calling or texting or who knows what else. As parent, though, I have good reason for providing my teens with a cell phone. When they’re out of the house and it’s late at night I take great comfort from knowing that at any time I can call them and talk … to their voice mail.
Maybe they have the right attitude, letting the calls they don’t want to answer go to voice mail. I’ll have to think about that, but right now I need to go. I hear the strains of Mozart in the next room. I need to see if it’s the radio or a cell call.
