[A Rant by Jeanniebeann]

The Evolution of Cell phones and my desire to have one… or not.

I remember when I first caught a gander of a very small cell phone that you had to flip up to talk to someone on. Yes, I admit it, I wanted one. I was very impressed. It was not in real life that I saw this marvel of technology, it was in a movie. The man with the phone in the movie was an obscenely wealthy drug dealer ordering a hit on someone.

At that time I had only seen one cell phone in person, and it was a huge monster that required the owner to carry around a large battery pack for it to continue to work. It was in the possession of a woman artist who confided in me that she was a Russian princess in hiding and that most of her family and many of her ancestors had been murdered. (Or is the term “assassinated” more appropriate?) Nevertheless, she was very mysterious and I was curious and impressed, not because she was a Russian Princess, but that she had a cell phone.

Later, cell phones evolved to where the average business man could afford them, but he was usually a very important and well paid man who had to keep in touch with his very important network of people. I remember thinking how nice it would be to be that rich and/or important. This was during the era when small time drug dealers were all still wearing pagers, and pagers had become something of a status symbol for people who wanted to make a statement of how important they were or that they could get you some drugs. Soon all the cool kids were carrying pagers to school. It meant that they were connected to.. well, someone. (Even if it was not a drug dealer, it made them look cool.) I also remember when they would no longer allow children to bring pagers to schools.

My, how times change. Today, anyone who carries a pager is considered a stone age idiot. (Are there even any more pager companies out there? I don’t know and I don’t care.)

Last week I was in the grocery store and I saw a stringy haired overweight poorly dressed mother of three dirty faced brats who live in one of the few trailer parks in town talking to her husband on her cell phone about the grocery list. She paid for her groceries with food stamps. That is when my desire for a cell phone died completely.

But I began to wonder if I should then consider myself a complete failure in life. I don’t have a cell phone and I have never had one. Now, I don’t want one because they have become too common place. Now I can proudly count myself among the few people who don’t have a cell phone. In fact, when I see people walking around talking on a cell phone, I just count them as invisible people, because they are in some other world and they aren’t going to notice or talk to anyone else, after all, they are on the phone. They are obviously too busy to talk to me or anyone else. Besides, I have always been taught not to bother people when they are on the phone.

No telling who will whip out a cell phone these days.

Another article on my Rants and Reality Checks Blog:

A word about the singularity:

Rants and reality Checks:
http://jeannie49.wordpress.com/2006/09/17/61/

I personally do not own a cell phone either. If people want to get in touch with me they can call my home phone and leave a message if I am not there or.......find me.