Cell Phones

Posted on June 11, 2003 in Possessions

For Sale: One Plot Twist for story or screenplay about adulterous love. Wronged spouse finds out by listening to voice messages on cell phone, which turns itself on accidentally and records the sound of heavy breathing and racous orgasm. Send $50 to me.

My cell phone has developed the naughty habit of turning itself on when I am moving about in the world and recording what I say. Today it captured me clunking about in Barnes and Noble and, later, talking to a neighbor about her huskie puppy.

Personally, I am ambivalent about cell phones. I use them to catch calls from my physicians and family or to call for assistance when I see someone stranded by the side of the road or an accident. On the other hand, I have been known to leave them behind — “escaping the electronic leash” is how one friend described it to me.

Then there’s the issue of people receiving calls when I am not getting them. One can start sounding as spiteful as the narrator of Browning’s Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister when one mischievously plots Monkey-Wrench Gang tactics like removing the batteries on the sly or dropping a heavy, flat piece of stainless steel next to the caller.

The very name “Cell Phone” sounds prisonlike. Except that we get to parade in public, showing our chrome-plated locks off as a mark of sophistication and affluence.