Phones - 10.23.09

Phones – 10.23.09

Do you remember back as a kid when portable radios only had the one speaker? And you had to turn that dial ever so slightly to get it tuned in the station. And then, once you had it tuned into the station as best you could, you had to make sure you didn’t bump the table for fear of losing the signal or, even worse, it might start blaring out nothing but static so loud that it’d wake up the dead? Ok, then. Take that staticy sound and morph it into a very bad rendition of Axl Rose’s hard-core, 80s, mullet sportin’, Trans-Camaro drivin’ fight song, “Welcome to the Jungle”. That was the sound I heard coming out of the man’s pocket.

This guy must have his cell phone ringer turned up as loud as it would go. This is obviously necessary, considering just how important this guy thinks he is. Or isn’t, as reality would have it. You be the judge.

It wouldn’t be bad if this guy’s phone only rang once or twice a day, but he, who barely eeked past the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection, has more people calling him than a drug dealer on check day.

Making matters worse, he uses the exact same annoying ring tone for text messages. So whether he’s getting texts, or getting phone calls, it doesn’t really matter, the entire floor knows he is being welcomed to the jungle.

Well, I hear this noise come out of this guy’s pocket. He puts the donut down. That white powdered sugary dust falls gently from his mouth to his shirt and pants like dandruf, where it’ll stay all day. With a full mouth of cakey matter, this guys mutters “Hello”. Of course, that’s loud too. Then, comes the surprise.

I hear him say, and I quote “Peace of shit!” and he tosses the cell phone on his desk. “This peace of shit phone won’t hold a charge for nothing” he exclaims.

What?!?

Won’t hold a charge? You’re on the damn thing all day long! It can only do so much!

He’s on his cell phone 3-4 hours a day. Straight! He’s checking stocks he doesn’t own. He’s checking items that he’s not buying on eBay. He’s forwarding texts containing nudie pictures or racially inappropriate jokes. He’s playing Brick Breaker for hours on end. He’s on the thing, virtually all day long.

Yet he throws it down because it won’t hold a charge?

The battery can only last soooo long, for goodness sake.

This guy is barely 21 years old. He’s young, dumb and full of (something that also rhymes with dumb). He’s the Grand Poo-Bah of today’s non-contributing zeroes. This arrogant little shit has got to be the most spoiled little excuse of brat vermin that I’ve ever met.

I wonder, do all young people think this way?

He’s 21 and I’m only 36. But I do know just how far we’ve come. When I was a kid, we had to go into the room that had the phone. Back then, you had to plug the phone into the wall jack and only certain rooms had those wall jacks. Once in there, you’d pull up a chair because the cord was about as long as your forearm. And you’d pick up this 12 pound block of metal and plastic and move it closer to you on the stand.

You’d put this cold, heavy, black receiver handle to your face and listen for a dial tone. Invariably, there’d be someone talking and you’d have to wait until they got off. And it might not be someone at your own house either. It may be the neighbors that were using the phone, because back then we had party lines. Different people shared a single line called a Party Line. They had their own ring, similar to a modern day ringtone. One household’s ring may be short short. The other’s may be long short. Then yours may be short long. It was fairly common to answer the wrong line, so most people would let it ring an extra time to make sure they heard it right. It’d ring. They’d walk in to the room with the phone. Stand there with their hand on the receiver. Then it’d ring again. And then they’d answer it. And there were no such things as Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, or Answering Machines. There was only the ring.

And if nobody was home, it just rang. No blinking, red light showing anyone had called. Just a cold, black, hunk of plastic and metal that weighed about as much as a small boat anchor. And when it wasn’t being used, it just sat there, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

So no one is on the line and it’s time to dial the number on the “rotary dial”. The rotary dial was this little, thin disk that you turned with your finger. You’d put your finger in this shallow hole that usually didn’t quite fit your finger tip and you’d drag it all the way around to dial the number. The wait time between dialing each digit depended on which individual number you were dialing. For instance, a 1 was one tick and a 0 was ten ticks.

And the old phones didn’t have power steering either. You’d have to put some umpff into it to get it to go all the way around. And they were loud. And if you were eating potato chips or something, forget it. The grease would make your finger slip out and you’d have to start all over. It never failed, the person you were trying to call had a number like 794-8890. You’d put your finger in the 7 and pull it around… then wait as it tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked. Then put your finger in the 9 and pull it around… then wait as it tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked back around. Then the 4. Tick-tick-tick-tick. Then the 8. And your finger would slip.

Awe, shit! You had to start over. You’d put your finger in the 7 and drag it around… then wait as it tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked. Put your finger in the 9 and drag it around… then wait as it tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked back around. Then the 4. Tick-tick-tick-tick. Then the 8. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. The next 8. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. The 9. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

And your mom would yell for you. “Who are you calling in there?” she’d say. “I can hear you dialing!”

“Nobody, Mom.”

“I can hear you dialing. Don’t lie to your mother!”

“I’m only calling (insert random friend’s name here)! His mother doesn’t care!”

“Well, don’t stay on there long. I’m expecting an important call from (fill in the blank).”

Then, you’d put your ear back against the receiver and realize that you waited too long and had a dial tone again. You’d have to start over.

It was irritating, but that was the way it was. It was a normal every day thing back then.

We were lucky. We were a little above average in the area of technology when I was a child. We had a CB Radio in both of our automobiles and we had Walkie-Talkies. And it was awesome! It was sort of like having a telephone, but it was mobile. I loved it!

And if you’d ever have told me that one day I’d carry around the equivalency of a house phone with the portability of a Walkie-Talkie, I’d have told you that you were nuts.

But, in actuality, that’s what we have with cell phones. Now, what gripes me to no end is when the selfish, inconsiderate, non-participating zero throws this technological marvel down and makes the comment that it’s worthless because it won’t hold a charge. It upsets me.

This thing you carry in your pocket, lets you call from anywhere. Anywhere! Not the just from the family room. Not just from your parents bedroom. From anywhere! You don’t even have to type in their number. You don’t even have to remember their number. You just scroll down in your Address Book to the name you want to call and it knows the number for you. You press the green button. Then this little thing the size of a box of office staples sends a signal into the air. Sends it through your house or building. Sends it up over the clouds. Sends it out into space, for crying out loud! It touches a satellite that’s orbiting the Earth. And then it returns the signal directly back to your small, handheld device. And WHAMMO! You’re connected! Everytime! There’s no waiting to use the phone. There’s no Party Lines. There’s no nothing! No one can listen in on your conversation. It’s very private. You just simply make the call!

Ok, you’re on the phone talking and another person tries to call you. This little device not only alerts you to that, but it’ll send another signal to outer space that let’s you put the first person on standby, or hold, and then it will let you immediately talk to the next person. All with one single touch of one single button.

You used to go months or years without talking to family or friends because they lived so far away or didn’t have a house phone. Now you can just call them, anytime! Also, in the old days, if you wanted to send them a message, you had to write a letter on paper. With handwriting! Then you had to buy an envelope. Then you had to buy a stamp to put on that envelope. Then you had to either drive it to the post office or put it in the mailbox. Then, as if that weren’t enough, you had to wait a week for them to receive it and another week if you were to get a response.

But it’s not that way anymore. Today, you take that same tiny, little device that talks to the satellites and type your message directly on it. And then hit the button to send it. Within seconds, the other party has your message. That used to take a week. Now it’s literally in seconds. You also get a reply within seconds. You can hold entire conversations without ever saying a word or buying a stamp. But, remember, this piece of crap won’t hold a charge!

Oh, you want to take a picture? You can use that little device for that too. You don’t like that picture? Delete it. Then take another one. It wasn’t all that long ago that you had to buy a camera, buy film, buy batteries, load the film, take the picture, hope it was straight or that they didn’t blink or that the lighting was good enough, take the film to the PhotoMat, wait a week and then pay to be able to see the, usually bad, pics that you took. And usually you’d found out, after paying for them to be developed, that they were crooked, dark, or overexposed anyway. But this piece of worthless junk won’t hold a charge! Ungrateful idiocracy, is what it is.

Say you want to “camcord” an event… then do that with your phone too! It will let you! Record away! But this junk won’t hold a charge, right?!

Want to play a game or use a calculator? Then do it! Right there on your phone! But remember, this thing won’t hold a charge! Sheesh!

You would never have been able to, or even wanted to, carry a telephone, a CB Radio, a Walkie-Talkie, a camera, film, a video recorder, a video tape, batteries for all those things, any type of card game or board game AND a calculator all at once with you. But nowadays, it’s there for the using, if you want to use it. It’s just there! Use it or not. It’s just there!

Then, on TOP of all of that, if you want to browse the internet or look up some facts or visit porn sites even, you can do all of that too! Right there! Right here! Right now! And it’s at your fingertips. But you throw yours down because you say it won’t hold a charge! What a loser reaction to a modern day marvel!

Ok, so you want to listen to some jams! It’s a jukebox in your pocket. 10,000 freaking songs and a runnin’ ton of videos, right there for you to enjoy! But it’s frustrating you because the battery’s going dead.

You want to see a movie while waiting on whatever? It’s a miniature portable movie theatre that doesn’t have sticky floors. It’s always with you, Mr. Ungrateful!

Oh, and you wish you could tell when it’s your phone that’s ringing instead of someone else’s in the room, you can even personalize the sound of your ringer. Who’da thunk it?

So you want to complain about how bad you have it, Mr. Zero? In between this moaning and wailing about how awful his cell phone is, I tell him to give it here and let me take a look at it.

I pick it up. Wait a minute. It’s holding a charge after all! There’s nothing wrong with this thing. Oh, I see what it is. It’s out of minutes!

This loser, low life, ungrateful no account, whose about as useful as a wet tampon, has run out of minutes. I guess he needs to rush back down to the washateria and buy some more. And he’s even more of a loser for not even realizing it!

Amazing! This has got to be the most unaccountable generation this world has ever seen!

He should have gone with the awesome new Cellular South unlimited plan that gives you unlimited everything for only $79 for the first phone and the second one on the account for $39. Thanks to Cellular South, I don’t have to worry about anything. I get to call and text who I want, for as long as I want, as much as I want. It’s great!

(Little plug there for my buddy, Josh @ Cellular South!)

I guess this turned into a modern day version of how hard it was to walk to school, uphill, both ways. But it’s the truth!

Bottom line… don’t be a non-contributor and get a decent data plan.

End of story.