Life without a cell phone

I don’t have a cell phone. I haven’t had one for over a month now. When my empoyer no longer required me to have a blackberry and took the one they had given me I never got around to getting a new phone (I did half-heartedly shop for one). There have been a couple of times this month (no more than two or three) where it would have been nice to have to option of a phone but nothing critical. No need stronger than “nice to have.” Telling someone you don’t have a cell phone now-a-days generally invokes questionable glances. People are more likely not to have a home phone that to not have a cell phone. My 70-year-old mother has one.

I don’t need a phone. Never have. I think we’ve been conditioned to be available 24/7 and that’s really not all that necessary. I’m not that important. I plan my life a little – make a phone call, if I need to, before I leave my office or when I get home.

Here’s the thing. For security reasons I cannot use or even allow one to be on in my workplace. When I venture from my office during the day there is a better than 50 percent chance that I won’t remember to take a cell phone with me. There is a greater than 75 per cent chance that if I take it with me I won’t remember to turn it on. I’m completely reachable when I’m in my office I have this lovely black thin on my desk with buttons that occasionally rings. Can’t use a cell phone while driving – of course hand-free is allowed but I don’t really believe in that being any safer than holding a phone and yammering away into it. There aren’t very many places/times where I can actually use a cell phone. I’m worried that my husband (who is extremely attached to his cell phone) will think a cell phone would be a great Christmas present. I don’t want one.

The common arguement (and I've used it) is "what if the children need my help." Well the school has my work number, if they can't get a hold of me they have my parents phone number, if they can't get a hold of them then they can call my husband. Someone will get to the kids (probably in the end me!). Last winter Sam fell ill at school. It was 3:30 pm and the school bus left at 3:45 pm they were questioning whether to put him on the bus or not and called me. I had left work (to get home in time to meet the school bus) so they left a message on my voice mail at work. I had not yet made it home so I missed their second attempt to reach me. They left a message at home as well. Then they called my cell phone. I was driving home to meet the school bus and forced to ignore the ringing phone or break the law. They left a third message. Had I been able to answer the ringing cellphone it would not have changed the outcome in any way as I was too far away to provide a better option than sending him home on the bus. I was unreachable for 15 minutes. Sam did not die. They put him on the school bus (as I would have told them to do) and when he got off the bus I put him to bed. These are the extent of the foreseeable emergencies in my life.

Instead of buying a cell phone for a hundred dollars and then paying $40 a month (minimum) to not use it anyways, today I bought the family tickets to go and see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra perform. I wouldn’t be able to hear a cell-phone during that raucous show as it is.