Cellphones Mon Amour

A luddite I am not: I do not go around smashing technology because I am wedded to things as they are. In fact, I think I've been very welcoming of most of our advances.

I owned a PC in the 1980s when they first became generally available (don't even ask what I paid for it. Hint: I had to take a loan and pay it off over time and I used WordStar and Xywrite word processing programs). I've even done fairly well learning to use the television remote, which looks like it could launch a space shuttle and has buttons so small you need a magnifiying glass to read them. The VCR programmer was another matter, but the less said about that the better.

What I want to talk about is my new cell phone.

All I really want in a cell phone is basic stuff, like store a number, dial it, answer a ring, let me know if there's a message, and shut on and off in a reasonable manner. I started ther service when I was widowed and wanted to be able to call AAA if I got a flat. My first phone, which I kept for many, many moons was just that. I learned the features as I needed them and I was happy as a clam until I forgot the thing in Starbucks outside Flagstaff and no one turned it in. It must have been someone less savvy than I because who else would bother with something so ancient?

Well, there I was in Arizona, six hundred miles from home and no phone. I didn't feel like driving home on long, empty roads without one and I didn't like the idea of waiting outside the restroom in some rest stop pleading with someone to make a call for me. Something clearly had to be done. I headed into the local Radio Shack. That's where I encountered a glittering world of the modern cell phone. It was culture shock.

When I was a child, I used to watch the weekly serials down at the local cinema. Kid's matinee it was called. One favorite was Flash Gordon, sort of a space cowboy who went from planet to planet and was always in some dire strait or another. The new cell phones were worthy of him.

"Do you want internet access?" the clerk asked me. He had this sort of doubtful look on his face as if he didn't believe at my age I knew the difference between ROM and RAM. Since those phones made my TV remote look deprived and required monthly IP access charges, I shook my head. He looked at me with pity.

"I have internet access on my home PC," I said with stiff dignity. "I use Skype long distance calling through my laptop. I just need a basic phone."

"Games and built-in camera? Choice of ring tones?" he asked. I shook my head. "Well," he said, "they come basic with all phones so it's a matter of quality and choice."

"Won't need them," I said.

"Blue tooth?" He asked. I had to think. I remembered that my grandson had a blue tooth on his game set. "I prefer to use a headset in the car," I replied. He looked at me sadly. His eyes said it all.

"Well," he said, "here's our most basic phone." I looked at the gleaming monster he handed me. It sat in the palm of my hand and cost almost $200. I looked at the others. This was indeed the cheapest as they were costing upwards of $500 amd looked like little tvs. He saw me looking at them and took one down. He turned it one way and it was a phone; when he turned it around he could type text onto the screen. He did it quickly using his thumbs. With my arthritic thumbs, it would take me hours to tap anything in.

"Cute," I said. That must not have been the right thing to say. "These are mini computers," he corrected me. "You can watch movies on them." I smiled sheepishly, not able to imagine watching something that small for hours. I would see double at the end.

I finally left with my "basic" call phone. It came "free" with renewing my two-year commitment to T-Mobile, which I would have done anyway since the service works for me. He had to show me how to open the darned thing (it slides instead of flips). I have used the camera once, just to see how it worked and promptly forgot how to do it except when I get into it by mistake--then it's tricky to get out of it. After several weeks I've managed to figure out how to set speed dial and how to change the ring tones. I can get my messages and finally set my PIN. It works. That's all I asked.

But, just to remind me whom these phones are meant for: my grandson grabbed the phone when he saw it, played everyone of the games on it, told me that it would connect to the internet if I ever wanted it, and asked why I wasn't downloading the cool tunes for sale as ring tones. When I explained I wouldn't be doing all that, he looked at me with the same pitying eyes as the Radio Shack clerk.