Pheeling Phony

Cell phones are a great invention. I remember the days when you had to call someone's house in order to talk to them. I'd wait with beads of sweat on my lip for one of my friend's parents to answer the phone, and when they finally did, I proceeded with my nervous phone call routine. I would state my name and the purpose of my call, trying not to choke on my spit. It was the same little speach every time, "Hi, this is Becca. I'm calling to talk to (insert friend's name)." Usually, after the successful delivery of my speach, the phone was handed over to the person I had called for, but sometimes, if I was really unlucky, the person that had answered the phone would try to carry on a little small talk before handing me over.

I can see now that anything I did or said back then was automatically excused simply because of my age. For example, taking the small talk scenario, sometimes other moms would ask me questions like, "So what's your mom up to?" and I would answer, "She's in the shower." only to realize that that was probably more information than they cared to hear and more than my mom cared for me to give out. I will say this, one positive feature of the phone is the distance that it puts between you and the person you're talking to so that if your face happens to burst into red hot flames, nobody is around to notice. If I had only known that the person on the other end of the line was laughing at how cute I was, there would have been no need for the red face and the quivering hands. Maybe I wouldn't have been nervous about talking on the phone at all. Unfortunately I only realized all this when the excuse was no longer valid. Now saying something like, "My dad isn't available right now he's pooping." means I'm immature rather than cute and funny.

I think I've come a long way as a "phoner" since elementary school, but I still get a funny feeling in my stomach when I have to call someone; luckily, that isn't very often. Since the rise of cell phones, texting has become my main form of secondary communication. No need for awkward phone calls anymore, just *clicky, tick, tick, tap* and I can make plans for the weekend, figure out a homework assignment, or share my feelings with a friend. It's great, especially for someone like me, but lately, I've been frustrated with how frequently everyone, including myself, uses their cell phones. Of course, if I text someone and it takes them several hours to respond, I'm equally frustrated about the way that they use their cell phone. It's somewhat of a Catch 22.

I don't want to complain about other people here, so I'll just complain about myself and make it clear that anything annoying that I do is equally annoying when performed by other people. The first thing that I do, and I'm not proud of this, is I text while I'm at work. It makes me look like an indifferent or even lazy employee, but I'm so addicted to the excitement I get out of hearing that little *bzzz bzzz*, that I continue to bring my phone to work. Another irritating phone habit of mine is texting in a group environment. Texting while I'm with even just one other person makes me feel rude and distracted, but when I'm with several people at once, I'm extremely aware of it. The reason that I find it extremely rude to text while with a group, as opposed to being only moderately rude answering a text message when I'm with one other person, is that it's easy to remove myself from the group for a few seconds in order to answer a text if indeed it is important. With one other person, you can't just walk away and leave them in order to send a text message, so saying, "Excuse me, I need to respond to this." is alright in my book. But there's no excuse in a group. If you have a text message that's so important you can't wait two minutes to respond to it, you probably shouldn't be out with a group. High tail it to whatever hospital your dying family member is admitted into. For those of you who are guilty of group texting and aren't aware of the impression you're giving off, allow me to inform you. When you have your phone out at a party or a group get together you're really saying. I'm bored; I have better people I would rather be talking to; I have more important things to do than socialize with you. This is not a good way to make friends.

There are days like today when I wish I could take a sludge hammer to every cell phone I see, but then we'd be back to the days of trembling hands, rehearsed phone etiquette, and forced small talk. I guess the bottom line is that phone communication is a phony form of face to face communication. Living life to the soundtrack of a buzzing cell phone can create the illusion that you're extremely importance, and we all need to feel needed and significant. But I think that a truly fulfilling life is set to the soundtrack of silence.