Night of the Living Cell Phones
January 2003
by Jason Thornbery

Cellular telephones haunt me. They're everywhere. It's apparently still acceptable to let them ring loudly and musically in all of my classes at school. It's also mysteriously still legal to drive and chat with your buddies while you weave absent-mindedly up the boulevard and slay elderly pedestrians.

According to statistics, more than 110 million Americans are presently subscribing to cellular services. The United States was home to 284,796,887 residents in July of 2001. That means that nearly every other person alive here is regularly bumming me out while they argue with their grandma in Rhode Island as I sit in a restaurant in Newport Beach and attempt to eat in peace.

Living as I do in Orange County is probably worse than, say, Watonga, Oklahoma, where they only recently made incest illegal though.

Yes, we're all terribly impressed when you walk out of class, interrupting the teacher to talk loudly in the hallway for ten minutes. In fact, I'll bet the girls want you even more when they notice that mobile bulging in your dungarees.

I'm pretty sick of cell phones. Granted, they can be quite practical, and if I had a daughter she would have one nearby at all times, just in case you tried to hit on her.

However, when I see people cruising through the aisles of my favorite record shop babbling to someone on the other end about, "Oh, yeah, they have that Kajagoogoo single on picture disc too!" to some fat bastard too lazy and dumb to wedge themselves from the car outside and venture in, I just want to shriek. I'm not exaggerating. This happened last week.

If this commentary sounds like me just ranting and raving about something fairly insignificant, it's been a long time coming, and rather than a trend that dies quietly, this one's becoming worse.

Just as I'm the one of the few people I know who has successfully combated the urge to get a tattoo I'll probably hate in ten years, I'm one of the only people on this very continent who doesn't have at least one cell phone ringing in their pocket, and irradiating their reproductive organs at all times.

Does anyone still have a pager? I almost miss those things now.

(Jason Thornberry is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)