Kirby: How important are cell phones? Forget about it - The Augusta Chronicle

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Bill Kirby   | Augusta Chronicle

"You can't fix stupid."

– Ron White

Bedtime was approaching at the end of a pretty good day and I was assessing its many achievements with smug satisfaction when reality remembered something I had forgotten.

I had not done the one thing my wife had asked me to do. I had not picked up some pain medicine at the store hours before.

She had even offered to write it down, when I asked if she wanted me to get her anything, but I had dismissed such a notion as unnecessary and unneeded.

"Steel trap," I had said pointing at my noggin.

Now I was thinking something else.

I knew she would take such an over-the-counter concoction before she went to sleep, and that time was approaching.

I grabbed my car keys, mumbled something about my mother wanting me to get her a new toothbrush, and hurried out the door, trying to make the drug store before it closed.

Two miles down the road I remembered something else I had forgotten. My cellphone.

It was charging back at the house.

I was overcome with the strangest feeling.

I was actually driving a vehicle without a connection to instant communication for the first time in a long while.

I felt vulnerable. I felt uncertain.

I felt odd.

I have driven across the country without a phone in my car. I have driven in New York and California and Washington, D.C., without a phone in my car.

I have chauffeured good girls through bad parts of town without a phone in my car.

But that was then, and this was now, and now, I didn't have it.

I quickly concluded that the perpetual connection of cellular telephones is the biggest change in our lifetimes.

That's because it's more than a telephone. It is a security device, a miniature computer, a weather radar system, a direction finder, even a mini-car radio.

It has changed expectations and it has changed behaviors.

What would I do if I had an accident? I haven't seen a pay phone in years and have no idea where I could find one. Even if I did, I don't have any change. Do pay phones take debit cards?

I passed the street that led to a nearby high school and wondered what I would do if a teen texter accidently swerved into my lane and hit me. Would I have to borrow his or her cell to call my wife or the police? Or both?

I tried to remember what I did the last time I drove someplace without my cell phone. I couldn't.

How many decades since my first "bag phone" joined me as a co-pilot?

I started to turn around and return for my phone, but I was afraid the store would close. I didn't know its hours … and I couldn't ask my smart phone what they were.

So I stayed on course, driving as alertly and precisely as a 16-year-old seated beside a license examiner.

The store loomed ahead. I rushed inside, I found the medicine and even picked up a toothbrush to complete my cover story. 

I drove home, entered the house smoothly and slipped the small box on the top of the kitchen counter.

Then I acted like all was well, and it was, too. 

My phone was on the counter fully charged. Soon it was back in my pocket.

Like they say: Don't leave home without it.

The Link Lonk


March 06, 2021 at 09:34PM
https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2021/03/06/kirby-forget-your-phone-remember-its-value/6909575002/

Kirby: How important are cell phones? Forget about it - The Augusta Chronicle

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