Wit & Whimsy - If the phone rings, it’s not for me

People ask me if I have a cell.

Trillions, I think. But I know what they mean. I tell them yes, I have a cell.

Oh, good, they say, and they ask me for the number.

It doesn’t matter, I tell them, because I never have my cell phone on.

Then why do you have one, they ask me. So I can call someone if I need to, I say.

But . . . if somebody wants to get hold of you — they can’t, they point out.

Exactly, I tell them.

The reason I carry a cell phone is that I’m a geezer who likes to walk in the bush, sometimes on pretty sketchy trails. One of these days I might slide on a root, trip on a rock or fall down a hill. If my luck continues to deteriorate, chances are I’ll break something. When that happens (assuming I survive) I’d like to be found by Search and Rescue, not Turkey Vultures. Ergo, my cell phone. It’s for emergencies.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not that life-threatening to be “out of touch” with the rest of the world for brief periods of time. Humankind managed brief forays into solitude for millennia before Samsung and RIM and Nokia came along. For most of my life it’s been the norm to rely on land lines, Canada Post, a loud wolf whistle or a polite “ahem” when one wanted to make contact with somebody else.

Otherwise, you were on your own.

Nowadays people are seldom on their own except when they’re asleep. People check their BlackBerrys in restaurants and theatre lobbies, on buses and subways, in elevators and waiting rooms. When my plane touches down — as soon as the wheels touch the tarmac — there’s an in-cabin frenzy as passengers paw for their smart phones to see if they’ve missed any calls or text messages while they were temporarily aloft and out of contact.

What did they do before cellphones? They thought, I suppose. They daydreamed and fantasized, stargazed and wool-gathered.

They retained some mental space in their life.

Seems to be out of fashion now. Recently we had a guest (I’m not naming names but you know who you are) — over for dinner and a TV movie. The dinner went well; the movie not so much. Said guest sat hunched over his smart phone furtively text-messaging for an hour and a half.

Such behaviour would have been considered boorish even a decade ago, but it’s rather commonplace now. People think nothing of being in your company and talking to somebody else who’s not present. Weird.

Once I saw a young couple in an intimate bistro sitting at a table adorned with a candle and a lovely white rose in a vase. Very romantic. Except they were not holding hands or murmuring sweet nothings to each other. They were each bent forward, peering into their handhelds and text messaging . . . who? Who the hell would be important enough to talk to at a moment, in a situation like that?

How has such a tiny piece of technology come to have such power over us? We should have seen it coming.

More than a hundred years ago, when the clunky old telephone was a brand new invention, a forward-thinking Frenchman had one installed in his chateau, then invited the painter Edgar Degas to dinner.

He also pre-arranged to have a friend phone him during dinner, so that he could impress Degas.

Dinner was served, the phone rang, the Frenchman rose with a flourish and talked on the telephone for a few minutes, then returned, glowing with pride to the table.

“So that is the telephone,” Degas said gloomily. “It rings and you run.”