Can We (Not) Talk?

A few days ago I accidentally left my phone at work. When I called in to see if it was there, one of my co-workers took one look at my sorry little flip phone and said, "What the heck is this? I haven't seen one of these in five years. It's time you moved into the 21st century and got yourself a new phone." To which I replied, "I don't think so."

I may be crazy (or at least out of touch with the rest of the world) but I don't get the obsession with cellphones. I do not want to be at the beck and call of every person I have ever met. I do not want to be awoken with missed text messages. And I do not want to retrieve my e-mail from Katmandu (okay, I don't really want to go to Katmandu either but it sounds better than Orlando).

Everywhere I go, I see people who feel differently. They walk around with bluetooth earpieces that make them sound like escaped inmates from an asylum. They bury their heads as they furiously type in some message that just can't wait until they get home. They do everything they can to interact with their electronic friend rather than actual human beings and I want no part of it. A friend of mine told me that he was at the pool with his daughter where he saw a mom so engrossed in her cellphone that she waded around the swimming pool, phone in hand, completely neglecting the child paddling at her feet. I don't care how cool any phone is, if that's what happens when you own one, you can count me out.

To be honest, it might be nice to slide through hundreds of photos on the latest gadget. It might be fun to take pictures and make them available immediately to any and all interested parties. It would certainly be convenient to have a built-in GPS to help me when I'm stuck on some road in the middle of nowhere. But I don't need any of it. And I don't want to be a slave to a piece of machinery that a recent poll revealed to be more necessary to the participants than their lunch (check out the recent Time Magazine cover story).

So, my flip-phone and I are going to hang tough. We're stuck with one another until the inevitable happens: it dies or I lose it. Until then, I'm going to try to ignore the pressure to upgrade to one of those expensive, do-everything-but-make-coffee smartphones.

I just have one request. Try not to run me down while you're using yours.