I know it’s unrealistic, politically incorrect, and uncool, but I loathe cell phones.  Lucky people live where there’s no cell service!

Maybe it’d be OK if it was JUST a phone, but it’s a camera, recorder, computer and alarm clock.  There’s more technology in a smart phone than all the systems added together used to send the first man to the moon!  And whoever heard of microchips? Chips are supposed to be made by Lays, not drain the living life out you!

Plus, Europe says it causes cancer!  And then you pay a ton of money for unlimited talk, text and gigabytes of data.  Nobody should be bit by a giga!

Maybe it’s just me?  Maybe if I grew up not knowing anything but internet and cell service, I would fully appreciate cell phones?

Nope!

In my old-fashioned, decrepit way of thinking, cell phones are like Congress: you get a lot of talk, end up paying a lot and get virtually no return on investment!  (Virtually…see how I snuck in tech word there?  No wait, it’s virtual. Nevermind.)

One lazy Sunday afternoon I plopped in the living room with five of my kids.  Four were texting, playing, uploading and downloading on their smart phones.  The fifth, surprise surprise, was on an Ipad!

Two weren’t talking out loud, but texting each other.  In the same room!

They said they wanted a “private” conversation.  Well duh, Einstein, go in the other room!  Turns out their “private” conversation was about me!

One daughter looked at me, glanced across the room, then texted with a Silence of the Lambs look of amusement.

PaDing!

The other daughter casually reads it.  She looks my way while pretending to contemplate some deep mystery, like how much air is in a ping-pong ball, or how Clearasil works!

But then, then she laughs out loud!  Well, LOL to you too, Miss Wearing Green Rubber Bands on Your Braces!

She quickly texts back.  PaDing!

She reads it.  They both look at me and burst into side-splitting laughter!

“What’s so funny?”

They immediately return to a bored, stranded alone on a deserted island look.

“Nothing.”

Psft! Whatever!

I kept looking around to see what was so funny.  Checking to see if something’s on my shirt or hanging from my nose.  Something had to be funny.

To top it off, there was a perfectly good murder movie on.  Family entertainment at its best!  We could’ve all sat mindlessly watching without worrying about the Star Trek devices.  During commercials we could’ve had nice shallow conversations about who done it, but nooo!

It was PaDings and button pushing.

There’s a PaDing to my side.  Another daughter, who was playing a game on her phone, stops to look.

“Aww”.

She turns the phone toward herself, takes a picture and hits send.

I know it’s considered a basic human right today, but selfies still seem so… so…. so narcissistically odd!  When I was their age, never once did I turn my Canon AE1 toward myself, take a picture….sorry, it’s called a pic now….and get the 35 mm film developed a few days later at the pharmacy.  And if I had, I certainly wouldn’t proudly mail it to a friend, not email if we had it back then nor the Pony Express!

Only a self-absorbed, egomaniac would have even thought of it then. Not anymore.  Now a selfie is cool, fun, a self-expression of yourself.  

I think belching the alphabet song is too, but that doesn’t mean you should!

PaDing.  She takes another picture with her forefinger on her lips trying to look intrigued. 

PaDing.  She smiles. Takes a selfie with her eyes terror wide open and her tongue sticking out trying to lick the back of her ear.

PaDing.  A picture like she has sawdust in her eye. 

PaDing. A picture with her hair hanging down covering her face with the non-sawdust eyeball peeking out.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m Snap Chatting my friend, Daddy.”

“Well snap! Why don’t you just call her and chat?”

“I don’t want to talk to her.  I just want to Snap Chat and SEE what she’s doing.”

“Ask her to come over. Then you can both can SEE what the other’s doing?”

She sounded insulted. “No Daddy! I don’t want to talk to her or for her to come over. Besides, she’s busy.”

“What’s she doing”, and threw in for good measure, “when she’s not making faces for her phone?”

I promise you….as if testifying before Judge Judy, she said….drumroll please…… “A family reunion”.

That is, and isn’t, LOL. 

Surely some other parent, somewhere, is staring at his kids like a calf looking at a new gate thinking they didn’t get this from his side of the family!

Call me backwoods, but I’m happy with my old slide phone, an upgrade from the trusty flip phone.  I don’t want a smart phone.  Besides, Siri is irritating!

And truth be told, I want rotary phones again — maybe even a shared party line, which I’m pretty sure no one under 40 has even heard of.

It was so cool to listen for two short rings for the neighbor’s call, or one long ring for your house.  Who needs a smart phone when you can silently pick up and eaves drop on the neighbor’s phone conversations!

I bet too that if we still had that we’d talk about ‘who done it’ during the commercial!