For the last several millenia, the dog has been man’s best friend. It was a great arrangement. The four-footed creature was good for the soul and for fetching newspapers and slippers and keeping away the bad guys.
But the canine has fallen to number two on the best-friend hit parade, having been supplanted by the cellphone. And rightly so. You don’t have to take your cellphone out to pee at 6 a.m. And it doesn’t take chunks out of postal carriers’ bums.
So, given all this, it is only natural that the cellphone would become a status symbol in a society where status is no small matter. It’s a deep human need, we all have to try to get other humans to believe we’re better than they are. Or than we ourselves really are. What this achieves for the unfolding of the universe isn’t clear, but no biggie. (Whatever happened to the expression, no biggie, which evolved from no big deal which came from no problem?) Don’t think about it; just get a cellphone.
Even better: get your company to get you a cellphone. This is what happened to me shortly after I started work as the editor of a community newspaper a few years ago. The publisher walked in one day with my own cute little jobbie, with a wee number pad and a handy, dandy flip cover. Stubby little aerial. Tiny call display window. Adorable.
But best of all: a belt clip. I tell you, I felt like Marshall Dillon the day he first pinned on that badge as the sheriff of Dodge City. I carefully affixed that little doodad to the piece of leather that holds up my pants and couldn’t have been prouder if five gold Olympic medals had just been hung around my neck.
Immediately, I could feel a definite increase in my importance, both to the business that employed me and to the community as a whole. I was on my way.
All that was left now was for the thing to ring. I could make all the calls I wanted on it, which I did. Ten calls home to see how things were going, for example. But, I wouldn’t be happy, I knew, till the darned thing called me. That part, I found out, I didn’t have much control over.
A day and a half went by and not a call came through. I swear I saw a spider eyeing up my phone and belt as a good place to spin a web. The fact that nobody had my number yet might have played a part in the lack of activity, but surely it would soon go off. It could have rung while I sat at my desk. Or behind the wheel of my car. Or in the restaurant, eating lunch. But a cellphone, it seems, unlike a dog, has a mind of its own.
One cola too many sent me to the washroom at work that second day and as I stood there contemplating the meaning of life, it finally happened.
Brrrrrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrrrrr.
Now, I ask you, what is the proper cellphone etiquette in such a situation? Do you try to put matters on hold and take the call, or put the caller on hold and risk losing the first one? Or, do you attempt a bit of men’s room multitasking?
Unwisely, perhaps, I went for the latter course.
What, I wonder now, would my great-grandfather have thought if he could have seen me at that moment. What, in fact, would anyone think if they happened to walk by the tiny washroom and heard me conversing with someone in there? That a business meeting was in progress?
Shortly after, the paper was sold to another company, which, gratefully, made it a priority to take away my cellphone. I complained only mildly.
I’ve always had trouble doing two things at once.
©2005 Jim Hagarty
