Cell Phones

Currently, I do not have a cell phone. 

There, I said it. It occurred to me that I should have prefaced this declaration with something along the lines of: Confession! or Today in Ripley's Believe It or Not: Individual in Washington DC found to possess no cell phone! Thousands text their friends in disbelief. But I thought that it would be best to be upfront, as it were, and just spit it out. I do not have a cell phone.
Now, this is a circumstance not entirely voluntary on my part. I used to have a cell phone but it's gone now (complicated story, 2-year family calling plan, ill-fated relationship, 'nough said). Admittedly, I was reluctant to get one in the first place, and had to cajoled into the store. I do not like cell phones. Most of the time I can barely understand the person on the other end, I find them uncomfortable to hold, I do not want to be available at all times, and most of all I am entirely uncomfortable with holding my private conversations out on the street. That's just wrong.

I have this idea, I think it used to be widespread once, that private conversation should remain so. I for one am not interested in having the people sitting behind me on the metro listen in on how my day was or how I totally agree that my friend's boss is an idiot. So when I did have a cell and I did get a call, I would try and lower my voice so as not to be overheard. And that of course means that on the other end there's someone going What? constantly. Which means, I have to repeat myself at slightly escalating levels of volume, correlated with an increasing sense of frustration and a rapidly increasing embarrassed self-consciousness.

And you wonder why I don't like cell phones.

Now, I agree that they can be very useful for finding your friend in the crowd at Screen on the Green, or  alerting your father that the plane has been delayed 2 hours due to wind and you'll be late for dinner. But for normal, what-were-the-test-results, how-much-do-you-miss-me-right-now type of conversations, well I still want to say Get a room with a landline.

I've spent almost 3 months without a cell phone now and I find I do alright. Yes, you have to plan a bit more, and sometimes you spend 20 minutes waiting for your boyfriend to meet you at the Zoo gates, only to find that he was right behind the damn lion all the time. But overall I could probably live without a cell phone just a bit longer.

And yet, I'm looking at calling plans and phones and, however reluctantly, I will soon join the ranks of cell phone users once again. Want to know why? Because not having one at this point is making me self-conscious. And that's what put me off those phones in the first place.