I don't wear a watch or carry a cell phone. I wear a wedding band on my left hand and my Bar Mitzvah ring on my right, but that's all. I want my hands free. If I want to know the time I'll look at the clock or ask someone. If I want to know the weather I'll look outside. A cell phone is not some magic trinket bringing true love and order to my life. If I never had to talk on the phone that'd be just dandy with me but especially do I not want to answer the phone while I'm crouched down hunting for kosher salt in the supermarket, for example, or anything else for that matter. I'm sorry. I'm doing something. But the phone's ringing! So? I'm doing something. Where is it written that when someone calls, one must answer regardless of what one is in the middle of, or not in the middle of, or in the middle of absolutely nothing at all (which is where I can often be found).
I don't think I'm a Luddite. On the other hand, I don't think necessity is the mother of invention, either. Invention - we're still on the other hand - is the mother of necessity. To wit: the FAX machine. Did we need it until we had it? Where is it now? Was it even in our wildest dreams - the ability to get your deli's menu on a print-out? And the web? Fuggedaboudit! Who even knew? Who even guessed what a greedy part of our ecosystem it's become?
Everybody I know's always looking for their phone, always leaving it somewhere, or dropping it. And they're all upset about it. Where's my phone? OMG! Oops. And when they've got it, "Gotta jet. Runnin' out of juice." Do I really need to honor something that brought the butt dial to prominence? I'm no different from anybody else. If I had it I'd be losing and looking at it, too, and, yet, there are so many more wonderful things to see off-screen. What we're talking here is freedom. The freedom not to. Kris Kristoferson wrote and Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose". The fewer machines tying me to them the better. Maybe I am a Luddite.
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