#53 Ringy-dingy

I’ve finally found a new technology I can use. The other day I was sitting next to this annoying guy in a meeting. He was a cellphone abuser and his name was Carl.
We were at a C.A.A. meeting. Cellphone Abusers Anonymous. A support group designed to wean people from cellphone dependence. A 12 step program helping people first identify that they do have a problem, then leading them through the various steps of acknowledgement, acceptance, ownership, and how to break a long term expensive lease agreement. Cellphone abusers start out just like you and me. Then they find themselves endlessly engaged in the pursuit of “minutes.” At first it’s just a quest for daytime minutes, but soon they’ll think nothing of mortgaging their home for unlimited evening, weekend, and yes, anytime minutes. They sign up imaginary friends and 4th cousins twice-removed to friends and family plans. They totally ignore the normal warning signs that would stop the average social cellphone user: roaming and overages. Soon they’re on their phones everywhere. In the grocery store and at the theatre. At the PTA, changing lanes in their cars, even while they’re having dinner with their family at home. They compulsively enter all their friends’ numbers, addresses, and favorite nicknames in their little phone memories. Get the phones with cameras in them so they have an excuse to take it on a “get a way from it all” a hiking trip. They obsessively upgrade and add on all the new gadgetary accessories: Earphones and speakerphones and microphones that come down in front of their lips like McDonalds order-takers. They even get that little cyber-phone that plugs directly into their ear with that annoyingly bright blue light that announces to all the world that I’m a cellphone addict and I don’t care. It’s only when their life is in a shambles, when all their friends have shunned them in person and worse, put call blocking on their own phones to avoid their persistent, barely audible calls, when they can’t go potty without taking their phone along, when even Cingular won’t sign them up during peak hours, its only then they seek out Cellphone Abusers Anonymous. Hi, they finally say. I’m Carl and I’m a cell-co-holic.
It’s then that the healing can begin.
Just kidding. I did find out something cool though. You can download ringtones. I was shocked the other day because this guys hip started ringing and the sound was a perfect simulation of an old-fashioned phone. I flashed back to the fifties and nearly jumped out of my bobby socks. Then I thought: Great idea. Ringtones come in all kinds of sound effects. Borrow the phone of a cellphone abuser you hate. Download and install a ringtone on it that’s, you guessed it, a fart noise. Give it back to him. He puts it on his belt and next time he’s in an important meeting and his phone rings, out comes this embarrassing blattt from the region of his lap. Now that’s technology I can use.
America Ya Gotta Love It.