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Can you hear me now?



   I don’t know about you but I’m pretty certain it took me about five minutes to forget how I ever lived without a cell phone. I was one of those die-hard, wait-as-long-as-possible-before-I-got-one people. Right now, living apart from my older two children, I listen for those texts like a deep sea diver looks for his oxygen tank. Even if they just text “hi” it can make the rest of my day. I’m trying to keep my own texts to them less than 47 a day so that the ol’ cord can be stretched while not completely severed.
   I’m not going to lie here. I’ve got beautiful children. You probably think your children are beautiful too but there’s a difference. I’ve got redheaded children. That doesn’t happen to everyone you know.
   It was hard to leave them behind in Syracuse, hence the “family plan” for the phones I pay for every month. It’s money well spent. It doesn’t allow me to monitor them as precisely as I’d like but it does make a noise every time I text therefore forcing them to answer me at some point. Now it’s on their terms though. Sigh.
   The best part about the cell phone is that my husband can now text me from the grocery store and ask me where he can find the garlic powder at Stop & Shop. I can almost pinpoint it because I go so often I memorized the aisles by my second week here. 
   “That’s aisle 7 Babe,” I tell him with confidence.
   “Well, I’m in aisle 16 so now I’m walking over….I’m walking past the halvah do you want me to get some?” he asks.
   “Hell yes,” I reply. “Do they have the chocolate covered one?”
   “No, just the marbled. Do you want me to get it?” he asks.
   “Yes I do,” I tell him. “Why don’t you pick up a couple.”
   We have taken to eating halvah every night. We think it’s delicious and nutritious. We do this a lot. Delude ourselves about the nutritional value of things. I have carried on long arguments regarding the documented fact that Guinness is the best beer for you. It’s so good that it shouldn’t even be considered a beer. It should be considered a vitamin.
   If I didn’t have a cell phone my husband wouldn’t have been able to bring home halvah for me. See, years ago couples used to fight over the same type thing. The husband would leave for the store to pick up the whole milk and the wife would remember she needed a pound of butter and some Lucky Strikes just as his taillights left her line of vision. Then, she would stew about it until he returned. She might even pick a fight with him saying, “I was telling you I needed butter and cigarettes but you ran out the door while I was talking. You never listen to me. You don’t understand me,” she might say. We can now thankfully avoid what could have easily turned into another divorce and more broken families.
   I bet the shareholders of Verizon don’t even consider this. Or maybe they do and that’s why the whole cell phone business is so successful. They know us better than we know ourselves.
   Okay I’m going to stop now before I get into conspiracy theories. By the way, I like them. 


   I like to remember phone numbers because it keeps your brain active. If you don't use it, you lose it.
-         -  Joan Collins





Comments

Tori Kaase said…
Hee hee! Want you to know I am reading, and posting this, from my cell phone that I can't leave for more than 5 minutes without developing separation anxiety. :)
Unknown said…
See! You're not alone out there. It's become an appendage for lots of us.

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