Can you hear me now?

It's a bad sign, but a good weekend, when you have to query two different people with, "Really? What did I say?" Yet another reason why I don't own a cellphone. (The other option, stop drinking, is too ridiculous to even entertain.) Unfortunately my friends own cellphones making me susceptible to the few seconds of uncertainty after posing my twice-uttered question and determining if the asked is pissed. This tension, amongst other things, makes me think a cellphone isn't for me. The deepest, darkest secret of the MC blog is out. Its proprietor is technologically challenged.

It wasn't so long ago that saying, "Are they talking to each other?" when two cellphone owners were within eyeshot (why not?) of each other was a hilarious joke enjoyed by all your friends. Now I suppose the converse is true. If you eye two people NOT talking on cellphones, you may wonder aloud, "Why AREN'T they talking to each other?" probably nobody would laugh unless you had just enjoyed this post together, but now we're dealing in impossibilities.

In college, I was part of a team presentation about long-distance communication. I was slated with giving the condensed history of. I proposed that the first means of communicating over any distance was to yell. "HEY DEAD OX! SCORE!" Much time passed yielding only the relay of messages by human interaction - smoke signals, semaphore, etc. It wasn't until the telegraph wire that effective long-distance communication was developed. Morse asked, "What hath God wrought?" And after around 30 more years, Alexander Graham Bell said, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." Designating not only the invention of the telephone, but also making the first obscene phone call. Cell phone technology was tested in police cars are early as the 1940s. But was severely limited in range and reliability. The 80s gave us giant boxy carphones and finally, the 90s yielded the rise of the cellphone.

At first, only important people got them, doctors, lawyers and the like. This was fine and understandable to me, but gradually a shift came and people who fancied themselves important began to get cellphones. And the next thing I knew, I was the only one without one. All that time I have yet to be convinced that I actually need one. (Other than the scenario in which I'm about to be hacked to death my some psychopath who has already cut my landline.)

I'm not immune to the cellphone's charms. It is an effective, cheap means of communication. It's invaluable in an accident or some other danger (see last paragraph). It's handy. It makes planning social outings a whole lot easier. And it is ubiquitous. I mean, who doesn't have one? Well, I don't, but everyone else does, so I'll happily leach off you whenever I need to make a drunken phone call.

(Note: Hat tip to New York Moments. Her post on drunk blogging got me thinking about this. Assuming you liked it. If not, see her to voice your complaints because I couldn't have thought of this on my own. Thanks to my keyboard for getting me writing about it.)