Oh no!
I almost panicked. What would I do if someone important called and I didn’t have my phone with me to get it?
Oh no!
What if I get out and break down on the highway and I don’t have a cell phone to call AAA?
Oh no!
I don’t have my cell phone and can’t check in with my wife to let her know I’m alive and well, even though I’m only ever minutes away from home.
I worried about it all day long. I just knew the phone was ringing off the hook and that I was missing so many important calls. Surely, there would be a message on my phone telling me I’d missed 50 calls!
How did we ever survive in the days before we all had cell phones?
Gosh, I can’t hardly remember that far back...
I do remember back around the mid-1990s driving over to Logan to Cellular One and buying my first cell phone and I definitely remember how it cost a fortune each month. There were roaming fees and charges for use during peak hours.
I was spending at least $75 a month to make just a few calls (literally), but, because everyone was getting cell phones, I had to have one, too.
It was really neat to be able to talk all the time (well, back then, on top of Buffalo Mountain in Mingo County and at the McDonald’s in Logan and in Charleston, but not many other areas had cell service). I used my cell phone to call all over the tri-state area, and it showed in the bill each month.
But, I, like everyone else, had to have a cell phone.
When I made trips to cover University of Kentucky football and basketball, those long trips to Lexington were usually late at night and it was made safer by the fact that I had a cell phone.
When Sports Editor Paul Adkins and I both worked at different newspapers, we’d save gas by carpooling to Lexington and on one occasion, we found ourselves broke down by the side of the road and having a cell phone paid off as I was able to call a tow truck to get us in to a garage and on to the football game.
We also depend on cell phones every single day to get calls that we absolutely have to take or to make calls while we’re out multitasking.
We talk on cell phones while we shop, while we eat, while we exercise, while we drive (which is not a good practice, mind you). I have even seen people talking on them in bathrooms. Our lives have become so busy that we need a cell phone attached to our ear every waking moment and most people simply couldn’t live without their cell phone.
We have to check our messages or our e-mails or see if anyone has texted us (I’m still not sure why people text message; didn’t the telephone solve that problem many, many years ago? Can’t you just pick up the phone and tell the person on the other line what you want them to know? This country is raising the greatest generation of typists in the history of the world...)
But, how did we ever live without cell phones?
Life, for me, was much simpler before I ever got a cell phone.
I had no need to talk all the time. I didn’t feel like I urgently needed to make calls while I was driving. I ate my dinner in peace without that pesky buzzing sound going off every five minutes.
Are we really so busy that we need to be talking on a cell phone every minute of the day? Are we really so important that we need that cell phone right where we can find it so that we don’t miss that urgent call?
I believe cell phones are a convenience that have become an addiction. Most people nowadays store all their phone numbers on their cell phones and their contact information; they receive email and can check the internet from their cell phones; and they get all those urgent messages by checking their voice mail every hour on the hour.
I worried and worried about my cell phone being so far away from me yesterday afternoon and I breathed a sigh of relief when I found it. And, when I went to check my messages ... not a single person had called me all day long ...
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