By Kelly Kazek
kelly@athensnews-courier.com
March 28, 2008 08:26 pm
—
Y’all, you won’t believe the terrible thing that happened while I was on vacation last week: I had to spend an entire night without a phone.
No cell phone. No landline. Nothing.
I know, right?
Not only that, but I had no TV.
It was like, ewww, camping. Sure I had a bed, electric lights and a shower, but no phone or TV? It was downright primitive.
I lay awake for an hour wondering how I would survive. My fingers itched to feel the buttons beneath them. After I finally fell asleep, I rolled over and reached for my cell but it wasn’t there. I dreamed I heard the call of its familiar ring tone but I couldn’t quite reach it.
When I finally woke, sweaty and jittery, it was dawn.
Whew. I’d made it.
The nightmare began when my daughter Shannon and I stopped to visit Grandmother at her assisted living apartments on our way to the beach. Shannon’s cell phone buttons went on strike to protest 15 months of 20-hour-a-day texting and she wanted to borrow mine. Why? Because, at 14, if you can’t text for a week, your entire life is over. You may as well be living with Great-Grandma in assisted living.
How would you know that your best friend had begun dating a guy referred to as The Hot Junior or comfort her when they broke up 10 hours later?
How would you send sweet messages to your sweetie? (Note to teens: When texting, “Hey, babe,” to a boy from your mother’s cell phone, always be sure he knows it’s you. That message coming from a caller identified as “Mrs. Kazek” could lead to post-traumatic stress. You’ll just have to trust me on this.)
I couldn’t very well be responsible for the mental collapse of my daughter, so, as mothers are wont to do, I forked over my phone and did without.
I stayed in a room across the hall from Grandmother’s and Shannon’s and lay there feeling adrift. What if something happened? What if I tripped on the curling iron cord and broke my toe? What if I ran out of toilet paper? What if I got a paper cut from the book I was forced to read because I had no TV?
Sure, a phone was 20 steps away in Grandmother’s room, but still I felt panicky.
Had I become addicted, one of those people who talks on the cell even when real, live people are sitting right in front of me? Someone who talks while driving and texts while walking? Someone who checks e-mail via Blackberry while on vacation?
Tech addiction is not just an American phenomenon: In London, the government had to place foam padding around lampposts because people were suffering head injuries after walking into poles while texting.
Makes you wonder: How many times did people do this before government intervention was required?
And, are the Brits who are smart enough to avoid walking into poles resentful that their tax dollars are being spent to protect people who can’t walk and talk at the same time from brain damage?
To be fair, we Americans haven’t proven to be too bright when it comes to technology use. State governments are being forced to make laws prohibiting texting and talking on cell phones while driving. I’ve even seen people texting while riding bicycles in traffic.
As Forrest Gump says, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
He just forgot to mention that sometimes we don’t recognize stupid until someone makes a law about it — or until we spend a night of passionate longing…for the feel of a keypad beneath our fingers.
E-mail Kelly Kazek at kelly@athensnews-courier.com.
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