The Luddite meets the cell phone

Consider the word 'cell' for a minute. What definition, what images come to mind? For me, well, I think of a very small space, often punitive in nature. Now that I have dealt with the 'cell phone', I can't say that my opinion has changed much. And their tiny, delicate looks scare me - like putting a painted eggshell in the hands of an 800 pound gorilla. It didn't help that a former neighbor had come over once and said "You're good at fixing things, can you do something with this? Here ... " He showed me what looked like a clam shell with a broken back. Big Bill was a high school linebacker all grown up and the patient was dwarfed by his catcher mitt-sized hand. "Is that a cell phone?" I asked incredulously. "How do you dial anything with those tiny little buttons?!" He grinned "I've got this one finger nail that's a speck longer than the others ... see?" "Okay, then, so how did this broken hinge thing happen?" Turns out that he had picked the phone up in a rush and jammed it into his big Fozzi bear head a little too violently. Luckily there were no connections severed and I happened to have just the right glue around to rehab the device. But it left me leery of the devices thereafter.

A year later, we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere with the nearest phone lines 5 miles away. Solution: those dreaded cell phones. I grimaced as Mark plunked one into my hand. "I will keep this one somewhere as your spare then?." "No-o-o-o ... this is YOURS." Oh joy, maybe I would adapt, eventually.

Full adaptation has still not happened but I did find myself feeling obliged to check in with at least some people. The learning curve began in winter and we found that there was no signal in the rat trailer so I would put on the heaviest hooded parka I could find and stomp out to the junk pile towards the middle of the canyon. If I sat just so on an old steel bathtub, I could get a signal on good days. I sat hunched over hiding from the biting winds. The cold from the steel tub wicked any heat from my buttocks and replaced it with a searing frost ache. I probably looked like an Inuit practicing for the next Hemorrhoid Olympics. I had to shout over the wind and struggle to listen and soon learned to preface every call with "I might lose the connection or the battery may give out. Just remember that if I suddenly disappear, okay?" I would return to the rat with a kink in my neck, a numb hand and frost bite in various places and the thrill of phone chats declining further into simply dreaded events. Content and duration of calls narrowed down to nearly the efficiency of Morse Code if I could help it.

And so this post is my explanation for reconnected friends who would like to chat again someday instead of e-mailing. My typing speed has picked up a little and e-mailing doesn't involve steel bath tubs and frozen body parts. I won't say that I don't long for a good copper-wire connection and one of those old indestructible phone sets that actors used to hurl across the set on a regular basis without ill-effect. Meanwhile, I avoid picking up that flimsy little clamshell when it starts its jingle summons. While the signal coverage has since improved, my attitude has not.