Picture if you will: You are out with that special someone on a nice drive through the countryside. You have a wonderful picnic lunch packed, and in the next hour or so you will arrive at your destination, and enjoy what in your mind will be the perfect afternoon. You arrive at the park with the luscious green grass, and the wind is blowing softly through the trees. You are about to take a bite of your sandwich, and RIIIING!!! RIIIING!!! You cell phone goes off. It is your boss, he has forgotten how to get to his email, and he needs you to come back right this minute to show him how to do it. This situation sounds like it would really suck huh? Well, unless you are me. I don't have this problem. You see, El Donaldo doesn't have a cell phone.
I can just imagine the look on your face as you read that last sentence. There are most likely several questions running through your mind right now, and they all have to do with wondering, "How does he LIVE without one?" To answer that question...I live quite well, thank you.
I know this might come as a shock. After all, I do just about everything else electronically. I have this blog, I have both a Myspace and a Facebook page. I have 4 different email accounts. I have my iPod touch that plays not just music, but games as well. I am connected to the internet at home, work, and when I can find a signal, on my iPod touch via WiFi. I am constantly searching for updated news stories by way of all the outlets mentioned above. But for some reason, by not having a cell phone, I am somehow living in the stone age. And believe it or not, I am happy that way.
Not having a cell phone has so many advantages, I don't even know if I can list them all here. My favorite is the look I get to see on people's faces when I tell them if they want to call, they need to call my home phone number. Seriously, some people don't know how to react when you tell them you don't have a cell they can contact you at. The thought of not having instant access to someone 24/7 is enough to make some people hyperventilate.
Once they pull themselves together and process what I just said about being cell-less, the questions start. "How do you get by without one???" "What if your car breaks down, and you don't have a way to call somebody?" Or my personal favorite, "How is somebody supposed to get a hold of you when something important happens?"
What you in the cell phone carrying public don't understand is the FREEDOM that comes from NOT having a cell phone. Lisa and I can go out for a fun time and not have to be bothered by somebody calling wanting to know what we thought of American Idol the night before. We can go out to eat, and enjoy a meal without having to be checking our phone for the next text message to come through asking some random question that has no real purpose.
And if for some reason we step out of the restaurant and realize we locked our keys in the car, all we have to do is go back in and ask if somebody has a phone we can use. Chances are very good that in this situation two things will happen:
1- The place will go dead silent. Everyone there will think they misheard us when we said we needed to borrow a phone. I will look around the room to see if anyone has just gone into cardiac arrest when the news was broken they were sitting with two oafs who were not packing a phone with them
2- As soon as people get over the initial shock of the fact we are null cell, just about everyone's hand will go up, and the bright glow of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and Nextel phones will fill the room.
Of course part of me feels sorry for when Alexandra asks me for a cell phone. I figure around age 10 she will start hitting us up for her own phone. It is going to be one of those moments where as a parent I am going to crush my child's dream. Kind of like when I was little and my parents took us to see Grand Coulee Dam, and all Heidi and I wanted were some twinkies. We begged. We pleaded. And in the end...we left sans twinkies. Unfortunately for Alexandra, that cell phone she will want in a few years is never going to materialize. In fact, I know exactly what I will say to my oldest daughter..."Sure Lex, you can have a cell phone...as soon as your old man gets one." I was really hoping that she wouldn't start hating me until she was a teenager. Hopefully buying her a car will make up for it.
Call me crazy for not wanting to pay upwards of 100 bucks a month just so I can talk on the phone in a place other than my house or work. Just be sure to do it while I am at one of those places, or you might have to leave a message.
Of course part of me feels sorry for when Alexandra asks me for a cell phone. I figure around age 10 she will start hitting us up for her own phone. It is going to be one of those moments where as a parent I am going to crush my child's dream. Kind of like when I was little and my parents took us to see Grand Coulee Dam, and all Heidi and I wanted were some twinkies. We begged. We pleaded. And in the end...we left sans twinkies. Unfortunately for Alexandra, that cell phone she will want in a few years is never going to materialize. In fact, I know exactly what I will say to my oldest daughter..."Sure Lex, you can have a cell phone...as soon as your old man gets one." I was really hoping that she wouldn't start hating me until she was a teenager. Hopefully buying her a car will make up for it.
Call me crazy for not wanting to pay upwards of 100 bucks a month just so I can talk on the phone in a place other than my house or work. Just be sure to do it while I am at one of those places, or you might have to leave a message.
10 comments:
You forgot to mention way back in the earlier days of cell phones that you had gotten one for yourself. And that I eventually took it over for you because you realized that you really couldn't afford it. I wanted to have one because there had been too many times when I found out after the fact that the school had tried to call me about one of you kids and they couldn't get a hold of me. I admit that I am very uncomfortable to find myself sans-cell. But then I can't forget that the one time I left the house without it, And realized halfway to my destintion that I didn't have it, AAAND told myself, Oh come on, what are the chances you're really going to need it? And then promptly got in an accident, and couldn't call Lisa to tell her that I couldn't pick Lorelai up (my intended destination) and then had to ask the people I had just hit if I could use THEIR phone!?!
About that trip to Grand Coulee. I know now how awful it was of us to not have gotten you two those damn twinkies. That was just one little part of what I will ALWAYS remember as THE VACATION THROUGH HELL AND BACK!
Never say never.
We don't have cell phones either (or cable, but that's another story!). There just no one I want to talk to that badly! :)
And, from experience, if you roll your car on the freeway, people stop. And help. Because people are awesome. And THEY have cell phones. And they are calmer and more rational anyway. And if you hit an elk and crash your motorcycle and break both legs, you won't be able to get to your cell phone anyway, so it does you no good. So. Yeah. Alexandra and Katie can hang out in cell-phone-less-ness together. :)
I don't have a cell phone either. I think it would be handy to have one for those school calls, but like you, don't want to pay the extra money each month. When my car broke down, a police officer let me borrow his cell phone. Otherwise, I could have walked to the nearest restaurant and borrowed their phone. Not that hard to find people willing to pay hundreds of dollars a year on phones.
It seems like a lazy way to not find out where you're going so you can call someone and get directions from them over the phone, or at least that's what my husband's boss does. He calls my husband and I (not as frequently anymore-maybe the jesting I made at him made him stop...) for directions all the time for Tri-Cities. I would stop what I was doing and Google Maps it.
First of all, Susan, you just made Donald's point exactly. The one time that you didn't have one and needed one....the person next to you did have one. And even if they hadn't, I can assure you that the next passerby on the street would have. There are phones everywhere.
Second of all, I agree that they are good to have for emergencies. And what Donald did not mention is that we do have 2 cell phones. So Heidi was right when she said 'never say never'. But the thing about our two cell phones is that we don't give out the number. That way we are free from being contacted 24/7. We have them with us in case of an emergency. And that brings such comfort! Especially during my drives to Spokane with Elisabeth. If something were to happen, I have the means by which to get help. The other thing about our 2 cell phones is that we do not have a contract. We purchase minutes for them once or twice a year for 10 or 15 dollars. Those minutes last forever....because we mostly never use the phones. I think that cell phones are wonderful. I don't think it would be wise to turn our backs on such a wonderful modern day invention and convenience....so we don't. We use them wisely. I just can't get over how addicted people are with their phones. When I am sitting in ward councel on Sunday mornings or mutual on Wednesday nights, there have been SO many times when somebody has had a question for someone who wasn't there....so they text them. And there is always a text back within one or two minutes! It's amazing! How do people always get these texts instantly? It's because they don't leave their phones, the check them constantly.
I love the freedom that comes from not using one. I love grocery shopping in peace. I love being unreachable at times. I remember before Elisabeth was born, we didn't even have an answering machine. How wonderful that was! It meant that the ball was never in my court. I didn't have to come home after I had been out running erands to find that I had to call back so and so about this...or that so and so has a question for me. I was free. If someone needed me they had to try and catch me at home, and if they couldn't I was free from obligation. When I was expecting Elisabeth I decided to turn on the answering machine so that doctors and hospital would be able to contact me, which was very important. But I still dream about those carefree days of being unreachable :)
I don't feel like proof reading this. Please ignore/forgive and gramatical and/or spelling errors.
Love you Donald :)
I have a cell phone, but I might as well not with how little it gets used. I use it for texting more than I do for phone calls. That is not right.
The nice thing about having it though is when I get an unexpected call or text from a friend.
Way to go! We have a pre-paid cell phone (T-Mobile 10 cents per minute with NO other fees) that we use only when traveling on the road, and it lets us know when we have a business call (double-rings to the cell). It's a crappy phone-and we can't even typically answer a call (the battery won't last). Basically, all of our family knows that it is not a good way to reach us. My sister's phone is attached to her head...and I am always grateful that we don't have to constantly be "connected" even more than we always are (online)!
You make some very good, blessed points! But I suppose, just like almost everything in life, there's trade-offs...pro's and con's to it all. The best thing is, you know what will make you happy and you stick by it.
Lisa, I agree with you completely on the answering machine. We got rid of ours, and we don't have it on either of our phones either.
I got so tired of people assuming I actually ever listened to my messages and figuring I knew what they had called me about. So now they can either call me at home, I usually answer, or call my cell if they have the number, which I may answer. I feel like I have the best of both worlds. If I want to make a call I can and if I don't want to answer a call I don't have to. and I NEVER, EVER, EVER, TEXT!
All I have is a cell phone... and now I feel quilty because while out was out to lunch with David... I had two or three calls.-Not that I answered, because I didn't (mostly). Sometimes I feel like dropping my cell phone off a tall cliff or flinging it wildly into the river~ but then I wouldn't know when I there is an "emergency" that requires me to drop what I am doing and go rescue a kid from school or maybe beat up on a bratty 10 yr. old bully!
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