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Now that my son is in middle school, it\u2019s getting close to the point where he will need his own cellular phone.\u00a0 Unlike his younger sisters, he has yet to ask for one but there have been some times when having his own phone would have been handy.\u00a0 Thus far, when he has had to stay after school for extracurricular activities, he has been able to call us from the office or by borrowing a friend\u2019s phone, but I don\u2019t believe that is a good long-term solution.\u00a0 Clearly, it\u2019s time he had one but I just can\u2019t force myself to go out and get it.<\/p>\n
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I suspect my resistance has its roots in the past.\u00a0 When I was growing up, a telephone was a household appliance and the very idea that each family member should carry their own would have been ludicrous.\u00a0 Phone service at my house was strictly utilitarian.\u00a0 Our rotary telephone, in \u201crefrigerator white,\u201d sat atop the yellow pages on kitchen counter and was wired into the wall via a cord that was less than two feet long. \u00a0Its position demanded that you stand to use it and, because of its location in the working center of our busy household, calls were necessarily brief.<\/p>\n
The term \u201ccellular radio\u201d first came to my attention in 1982 when I overheard my algebra teacher, Mr. Stangvik, talking about investments with some of the smarter students before class.\u00a0 The technology, he told them, would soon put a telephone in everyone\u2019s car and, eventually, their pockets.\u00a0 His explanation of this brighter future was earnest and logical but, to be honest, I wasn\u2019t entirely sold on the idea.\u00a0 I had seen car phones on TV, after all, and while they seemed useful for big wheels like McGarrett on Hawaii Five-0 and for Major Anthony Nelson who was playing some character on Dallas, I could see no reason why plain old Thom Kreutzer from Snohomish, WA would ever need one.\u00a0 The very notion seemed silly, so I filed the idea in my mental waste basket and I went on with my life.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Stangvik was right.\u00a0 Just five years after he first mentioned them, I found myself trying to sell what were then called \u201ccar phones\u201d as a part of my job at Schuck\u2019s Auto Supply.\u00a0 Five years after that, I took possession of a huge grey handset that I used exclusively for emergencies during my father\u2019s cancer treatment, but, after my father passed, my need for constant communication disappeared and I quickly cancelled the service.\u00a0 I lived happily without a cell phone for almost another decade before I found myself living in Japan and was, once again, compelled to get one \u2013 this time for work.\u00a0 It has been mostly due to my wife\u2019s insistence that I have continued to carry one since.<\/p>\n
What Mr. Stangvik didn\u2019t know, and what I could never have understood even if he had known to tell us about it, was the way that, once something called the internet was invented, the cell phone would go on to utterly transform the way society accesses information.\u00a0 Had you told 16 year old me that, one day, you could hold an entry point to virtually all of humanity\u2019s knowledge in your hand and that you could freely skip through it while shoving French fries in your face at the local Burger King, I would have thought you were insane.\u00a0 I simply could not have imagined it and would have put the idea firmly alongside invisibility, interstellar travel and eternal youth in the realm of science fiction.<\/p>\n
But today, so far into the future that the once far off and fantastic year 2000 is well and gone in life\u2019s rearview mirror, things that I once would have thought to be science fiction are perfectly normal. \u00a0What hasn\u2019t changed, however is me and, much like the day I first heard Mr. Stangvik mention them, I remain essentially unconvinced that a cellular phone is a necessity.\u00a0 Still, I suppose the cell phone my son needs really isn\u2019t that different than my parents\u2019 old rotary phone in that it\u2018s a useful tool for a specific job.\u00a0 Having one will make all our lives easier and isn\u2019t that what technology is for?\u00a0 I might not like it, but I suppose it\u2019s time to join the new millennium get him one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now that my son is in middle school, it\u2019s getting close to the point where he will need his own cellular phone.\u00a0 Unlike his younger sisters, he has yet to ask for one but there have been some times when having his own phone would have been handy.\u00a0 Thus far, when he has had to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":346,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[625,624,598],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n