It seems as though everyone has a cell phone today except, of course, me. I didn’t know that everyone was quietly grabbing cell phones up as I was minding my own business and trying to teach myself how to operate a VCR. After all, so far, most people don’t have things hanging off of their faces to let you know that they just obtained a cell phone. And, a card carrying cell phone addict looks pretty much human at first glance so it took a while for me to notice that I was entering the twilight zone. I was about to become the last living person without a cell phone.

It’s sort of scary but you can learn to live with being the last human without 24/7 cellular contact. There are others of my kind but they are currently living out their lives in nursing homes, a long, long way from the world that we are now living in. My compatriots are all still living in the 20th century. A few of them are aware of the moon landing, but none of them have ever heard of a video, much less a cell phone.

As one of the few remaining cell-less human being’s, I feel that I should say something before I lose the ability to type/think coherently/or discern between nice and poor manners. You know, I realize that many of you learned to speak on the phone when you were short and at home. That could mean many different things to many different people. If you grew up in a stoic, Irish house like mine, you knew what it meant to “SHUT THE HELL UP!” But in my ex’s family of Chicago Italians, that sentence has never been spoken. Those people were so loud and obnoxious that my milk dried up when I visited them with my new daughter.

I believe that I overheard a Chicago Italian last week on a Marta Bus in Atlanta. The bus was about two thirds full but all you could hear was one lone male speaking on a cell phone. My stern look at him muffled his annoying self but before that glare, I had to listen as he droned on to his friend about things that easily could have been discussed after he finished his trek home. None of that conversation was the type of info that was life saving or even time saving.

Just so that you guys know, there was a time when it would have been considered extremely rude to sit near a person and speak out loud to another person, leaving the original person out of the conversation. Apparently, just using a telephone alleviates the manners required of a person. My right to a peaceful bus ride has just been superseded by the right of another to speak on the phone wherever his ass may be. How did that happen?

You should also know that there was a time when life and reality was what you could see and touch. It wasn’t sent to us in the form of microwaves so we had to interface with actual faces. It was a long time ago, but I do remember it. There were time schedules and other’s needs that had to be addressed. If you wanted to watch The Brady Bunch, you had to sit down in your living room at 7 PM on Friday night. If you missed it, you had to wait another week to see Marcia and Greg and you had to wait about 6 months before you could see the episode you missed. There was always something to look forward to and since you didn’t have that many options at one given time, you generally had a bit more time and energy with which to consider social obligations.

Today the options are overwhelming. With a small hand held appliance we are closer to the rest of the world than we’ve ever been but somehow our daily interactions with other humans are cut down quite a bit. And to whom do we owe our social graces…the people who are actually around us or the people to whom we are connected by electrical device?

I guess it really doesn’t matter what the people around us think, most of them don’t know our names and won’t ever see us again. That’s what makes it possible for people to go grocery shopping in their pajamas. No wonder they want to hide behind a cell phone. But you know what? We can still see them, can’t we?

How interesting that the very thing that is supposed to keep us closer nowadays…the cell phone, can be just as efficient at cutting people out of our lives. Cell phones have Caller ID and the people whom we would rather avoid are relegated to the voice mail box, never to be spoken to again. How does one break through the cell phone/blood-brain barrier if the owner of the number doesn’t want to let you in? If you were to call a number a few times and get no answer, would it be considered stalking to follow up with a knock on the door? Concerns like that will stop most people from trying at all.

How odd that I have changed nothing and yet the people with whom I speak have all changed the manner in which they speak to me. The tell me that they weren’t able to leave a message and then I feel as though I need to justify my lack of newfangled gadgets. As it is, I must explain that my number is a land line and therefore I can’t be reached at all times. If that doesn’t make a person feel hesitant by itself, the lack of ability to leave me a message is terribly disconcerting.

Unlike the microwave oven that sits on my kitchen counter, I shall not give in to the constant societal pressure to reach out and touch every single person or their voice mail. My father once complained that I had no answering machine. I explained that I didn’t want one. Then, after he bought me an answering machine so that HE could leave messages for me, he complained that he didn’t like my pre-recorded greeting. Assured that I could not please anyone and was going to waste no further time trying to do so, I took down my offensive greeting and unplugged my answering machine. If you want to call me, you have to call when I’m at home, otherwise you won’t be able to speak to me. But, my vow to you is that I will never leave you to speak to a machine. If you call enough, eventually you will get the REAL ME to answer and then we can actually have a laugh or two. The worst thing you can expect from me is no answer at all. But that just means that I’m walking through the grocery store and minding my own business…unless there is someone next to me who is speaking so loudly that I have become a part of their business for a moment…and that I’ll answer the phone when I get home so you can just do what your grandmother did, call me back.

From somewhere out there in the Twilight Zone.