Deb­bie Ja­cob

Every­body in my life seems to feel that the per­fect Christ­mas gift for me would be a cell­phone. Mind you, no one is vol­un­teer­ing to give me one for Christ­mas. Peo­ple just feel that I should treat my­self to a cell­phone. Buy it my­self. Pay for it my­self. Wrap it up my­self. Put it un­der the tree, and act sur­prised on Christ­mas morn­ing. I am still re­sist­ing that temp­ta­tion. I can't re­mem­ber to pay my land­line phone bill half of the time. I still have no In­ter­net; so I don't see why I should pump more mon­ey in­to the phone com­pa­ny.

Be­sides, cell­phones ir­ri­tate me. I will nev­er get used to every­one in the gro­cery store shout­ing their busi­ness in my ear while I'm try­ing to buy car­rots, and I have pan­ic at­tacks when I see cars com­ing at me while their dri­vers are on cell­phones. Isn't that sup­posed to be against the law now? Last week I heard a cell­phone hor­ror sto­ry that ter­ri­fied me. I was leav­ing the Star­lite Shop­ping Plaza gym when I heard David, one of the train­ers, talk­ing on his cell­phone. I was not pur­pose­ly be­ing a ma­co.

Ac­tu­al­ly, I was con­cen­trat­ing on bend­ing my knees while I hob­bled down the steps be­cause I was afraid David would give my train­er, Col­in, a bad re­port about me, and then I'd be in re­al trou­ble. Any­way, I heard David say­ing, "She is go­ing to call you, but she has to use my cell­phone be­cause when she went to the bath­room her cell­phone fell in the toi­let." Oh dear. That sounds like some­thing I would do. Now I have to add that calami­ty to my list of po­ten­tial cell­phone prob­lems. Here are all the rea­sons why I still don't want a cell­phone.

1. You have to re­mem­ber to an­swer cell­phones. I just can't get used to the idea of a phone ring­ing in my hand­bag.

2. You have to re­mem­ber to charge cell­phones. I would nev­er re­mem­ber that.

3. You have to re­mem­ber your cel phone num­ber to give peo­ple. I al­ready have a land­line and a sep­a­rate line for my In­ter­net. How many phone num­bers can I re­mem­ber?

4. Cell­phones don't like to bathe. I know this be­cause my son has dropped about five of them in the wa­ter–but not the toi­let.

5. You have to give peo­ple your cell­phone num­ber. I re­al­ly don't want peo­ple call­ing me when I'm buy­ing car­rots.

6. You have to re­mem­ber to switch off your cell­phone when you go to doc­tors' of­fices and many oth­er places. This is sure to end up in a boof for me be­cause I can't re­mem­ber any­thing.

7. You have to learn about all those gad­gets on a cell­phone. I can bare­ly re­mem­ber how to di­al the num­bers so all those gad­gets will con­fuse me.

8. You have to en­gage in idle boast­ing about your cell­phone. Peo­ple com­pare their cell­phones and I would go for the cheap­est one so I would not come off well. I'd just look cheap.

9. You have to stand in one of those aw­ful lines to buy a cell­phone. I don't do well in lines, and I wouldn't even know which cell­phone I want­ed.

10. I'd have to re­mem­ber to turn off the cell­phone in the car, and then I'd have to re­sist pelt­ing it out of the win­dow if I for­got to turn it off and it hap­pened to ring while I was dri­ving.

As you can see, a cell­phone is a huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that I don't feel ca­pa­ble of han­dling. I'm too un­or­gan­ised and too ab­sent-mind­ed to own a cell­phone. It's just not go­ing to work out for me. The prob­lem boils down to this: You have to re­mem­ber to put the cell­phone in your bag and car­ry it every­where with you–but ap­par­ent­ly you shouldn't car­ry it to the toi­let.

You can't slip in the mud or fall in the wa­ter. You can't mis­take it for a bar of soap and have it in your hand when you go to bathe. At night you have to re­mem­ber to hook up the cell­phone to a set of gad­gets or else you will wake up the next day to find that your cell phone has died. That is far too much for an an­ti-so­cial recluse like me to process.

Hav­ing a cell­phone would mean I'd have to have friends. I mean what would I do if I dropped my cell­phone in the toi­let? I have no friends I could call up­on to bor­row their cell­phones. So, once again, I'm in search of the per­fect Christ­mas present. A cell­phone doesn't seem to fit the bill. If I'm to be per­fect­ly hon­est, I would re­al­ly just like my In­ter­net to work again. That would be a good enough Christ­mas present for me. Mir­a­cles do hap­pen at Christ­mas, don't they?