A Cell of Their OwnThe latest American craze is bashing cell phone usage while driving. I am not a basher bytrade, but this topic gets my heart rate up and I want to jump on the bandwagon. However, Iwould like Americans to look at the larger picture – cell phone use, period – and join me incalling for an outright ban.All cell phones? Am I off my rocker? Well, yes, quite frankly I am, but that is irrelevant.Before our phones became mobile and we became tethered to them, our telephones satobediently on a small, nicked wooden table, appropriately called the telephone stand. When the phone rang, we went to it – if we felt like answering it at all. Sometimes we were in the middleof washing dishes, or, luckily, a hot, steamy sexual encounter in my Julie Andrews daydream.I did an unscientific study, one based solely on my own phone calls, but I think we caneasily extrapolate these to the majority of the population because I am, quite frankly, average, just like the majority of you. Going over my brain’s memory files, I recalled that ninety percentof the calls I received on my regular, pre-cell phone were 1. not for me (245%); 2. calls I did notwant, from salespeople or collection agencies (7,822%); or 3. simple wrong numbers (99%). Soas you can see by these highly accurate numbers, I was answering the phone a lot. And for all thewrong reasons!Well, I simply had to compare them to the statistics of my current cell phone in-take(telecomm lingo for: incoming calls). What I found astonished me, and I must insist, under doctor’s orders, that you sit before reading on. My study uncovered that 90% of my current callswere useless as well, highlighting the fact that there are a lot of people out there that should not be calling me, or should not even have telephones.

Yet the biggest problem with cell phone usage, especially among our young people, isthat they are on them

all

the time, not just when behind the wheel. Walk across any collegecampus, for example, and watch as classes let out. Before most of these students hit the exit, theyare placing calls. Not emergency calls, mind you - no appendix is about to burst. And they willall say the same thing:“Hey. Whatcha doin’?”Pause.“Nothin’. Just got outta class.”Pause.“Yeah. Okay. Call ya in a few minutes.”They hang up and repeat this conversation with everyone they know, and sometimes me, because they dialed the wrong number. My questions are many, but two would be: Why call back in a few minutes? What momentous event will happen in that time so you will have anything atall to talk about?You clearly have guessed by now the underlying problem. Our children were raisedwithout the appreciation of being

alone

! As a parent, you know the extreme value of a raremoment of aloneness. Yet our children have never been alone a moment of their lives. With atelevision and radio in every room of the house, a cell phone as a gift on their sixth birthday, weare to blame for raising our children without the proper respect for solitary time.Luckily we have some expert historical examples to help us correct this deficit in thecurrent crop of youngsters. Native Americans had a perfect process in place, until the white mancame along and pretty much messed up everything for these fine, cultured people with the rightattitude in raising kids.

What some far-sighted tribes did was send their young off into the mountains, alone, atthe age of puberty. That alone wins them a medal in my book, but there was an actual benefit tothis practice, beyond the obvious. These youngsters would traverse up the mountain, alone,without food nor much in the way of bedding or tools, and had to stay there until they had avision of their guiding spirit, or until they went stark raving mad. It’s a win-win, for the parents.If the teen goes loony, chances are they won’t make it off the mountain anyway. If the youngster is lucky, and finds their spirit guide, the spirit is in charge now, and the parents can finally getsome peace and quiet.Young people today, despite having in their rooms cell phones, computers, internet hook-ups, televisions, and so forth, grumble about being alone and isolated. I say let’s show them what being isolated is really about and take them to the mountains. Of course we won’t be completelycruel about it – we will let them go with their cell phone as they try and find their guiding spirit.Here’s my vision of what this experience could be like:Boy on mountain, shivering in the cold, places a call.“Hey, wassup?”“Nothin’. You?“Just chillin’ with my boys and wolfing on some Big Macs.”“Aw, man, don’t tell me that! I’m all alone, on a mountain, starving to death.”“Oh, yeah, right. My bad. So, seen your guiding spirit yet?”“Now that you mention it, I see something coming this way.”“No way!”“Way. It looks like.. like..”“Yeah?”