Cell Phones

When I was growing up, maybe around the age of 6, it dawned on me that my mother worked for the cell phone company but she and my dad were the only ones in the house that had cell phones.  I surely thought I needed one to be able to talk to all my friends…that I had at the ripe old age of 6.  As you can imagine, I didn’t get one.  Neither did my older brother and sister.   My parents thought we were too young to get one.  “How many 2nd graders do you see walking around with a cell phone?” my father would say.

Then as my oldest sibling entered middle school, she asked again for a cell phone.  ALL of her friends had cell phones.  She was the only one who didn’t.  My hopes of having a cell phone maybe were going to come true!  “Cell phones are expensive toys” my father would say and my mother would chime in with all the phone calls she would have to take at work from customers who were upset because their child used their cell phone too much and now had an outrageous phone bill.  So, it wasn’t to be.  My mom used to get the latest and greatest cell phones from her company for free.  She typically was one who would test the new phones coming in and so often would change cell phones every six months or so.  We were doomed to carry around one of her old cell phones that looked cool but weren’t hooked up to service.

One day, my mom came home and asked us all to come into the living room for a quick meeting.  There it was…a brand new cell phone with all the bells and whistles!  We screamed!   FINALLY…I got my phone.  Better late than never I guess.  It was the coolest phone.  In reality, knowing that I know now…it wasn’t that cool at all, but we had a phone.   Year later was when the really cool ones came!  Games and everything! 

“Can you please put down your cell phone for five minutes!” my dad would say.  “All I ever see is you with your phone in your hand or to your ear. Maybe we should just have it surgically placed there!”  We would just laugh.  That was because the cell phones we had were cool and the one that my dad had was an older phone that had nothing on it but a send and end button.  So for years we listened to what we now know as his ‘cell phone jealousy’.  How do we know this???

Two weeks ago, we all went to the cell phone store and got my dad a new phone.  It was time to bring him into the current century!  A new phone for dad…and guess what…every time I turn around, the phone is in his hand or stuck to his ear!  What the heck! (490)

Ardeeemilla(: