Scott The Robot

The year: 2009, The Place: Everywhere

Look around in a public setting, preferably Starbucks. What do you see? A pair of the signature white ear buds peppered across the room, maybe a Bluetooth headset peeking from under the unreasonably long hair of the environmentalist in the corner, one or two PCs, and a plethora of Macs.

But what you maybe don’t see is what’s in everyone’s pockets. Maybe you do, because you have x-ray vision (you pervert), or maybe you seem to think that you’ve been in those pants, and therefore remember what kind of phone they had. Well, regardless of your ability to score, it seems that everyone in the room in which you may be looking has a cellular device. The 12 year old with the hot chocolate and cookie looks to have a small, cheap, prepaid piece in his pocket, attempting to prove that he is responsible enough for a real cell phone. The sharp looking business man, with his belt, seems to have about four different Smartphones, not to mention the double-action headsets he’s got going on.

Suddenly, an emo teen walks in, pressed to her face a fantastically subsidized GSM shitphone. You suddenly realize that the cell phone has become the American dream. My six year old cousin constantly brags about how someday, he too will be a card-carrying member of the cellular community. What he may not realize is that nobody cares, which is why I am writing this article.

Think about this: When was the last time that you went somewhere without your beloved cell phone? When was the last time that you saw someone without his or her much beloved cell phone? Were they without it on purpose? Nope. They forgot it. Had they remembered to put it in their pocket, which they usually do, they would be glued to that phone like white is glued to rice.

Next time you are in class, and the teacher is not paying attention, look around. Regardless whether the teacher be writing something extravagantly mundane on the board or updating the grade book, if you look around you will find that many about you will be composing textual messages to their much beloved, socially inept, “friends” using that same much beloved cellular phone.

Have you ever been on a car or bus trip, and heard someone exclaim, “Dang! There is no service here! [insert carrier] sucks the big ones! I hate them!”… Well, have you? I thought so. Simply because they are without their precious cancer causing magic commonly known as “bars” for a few moments, evoked inside of them comes the strong feelings of hate, regret, and the desperation and longing for a single bar.

I was recently told a story of a family whose offspring had ran up a $4,000 charge for text messaging. The family managed to come to an agreement with the cellular provider which involved changing plans and a new contract to change the bill, however the child was left uninformed and is expected to work off the $4,000 charge with no financial aid from anyone.

So, my point is this: stop complaining. What do I mean by that? Oh, I’m sorry that when I get an email, my cell phone vibrates. That doesn’t give you the right to tell me to stop texting at the table. You, the payer of the bill, should know that I do not text message, and even if I did I would not be text messaging at the table, or anyplace in formal company for that matter.

Stop complaining because everybody does it. And just because everybody else does it, does not mean that I do it. So there.

Scott

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.