Don't call me

Can you own a cell phone and not be a cell-phone person?

by Michael Joseph Gross

There are a lot of reasons to hate cell phones. For one, they're dangerous, especially at rush hour: our state legislature even had to pass an "idiot law" requiring drivers to keep one hand on the wheel at all times. For another, they're intrusive. Humble pedestrians like me, walking downtown in search of a little urban solitude, are beset by one-sided conversations. From 4 to 6 p.m. every day, the sidewalks are clogged with folks who broadcast to the world at large their business deals, their petty social arrangements, and their geographical coordinates ("Uh-huh, uh-huh, I'm right around the corner. Be there in two minutes . . . ").

I'm not the kind of guy who usually clucks, but cell phones morph me into a curmudgeon faster than you can say "Nokia." I look down my nose at these people, the way Miss Manners must with Montel Williams: no boundaries. No dignity. No couth.

This made my own purchase of a cell phone somewhat complicated. After years of resisting, I finally gave in this past summer, mostly out of professional necessity. Immediately, I set about devising some guidelines to guard against becoming the kind of person who owns a cell phone.

Having also bought the 75th-anniversary edition of Emily Post as a goad to write thank-you notes for last year's Christmas presents, I procrastinated on the thank-you notes by flipping to the cell-phone section for guidance. My heart sank. Post makes only two real suggestions: "remove yourself from a group to a quiet corner in order to make or take calls so as not to bother others"; and "answer your telephone promptly when in an audience or other public place where people are trying to concentrate."

Trouble is, Momma already kind of taught me that I shouldn't be yelling about my business in public. And then there are my philosophical objections to Post's ethical edict. It fails to acknowledge a basic premise of etiquette: if etiquette is a way of honoring others' time and dignity, it is just as much a way of protecting your own. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" -- the golden rule is not
altruistic.

Though Emily had failed me, I didn't give up the fight. I would make my own ground rules. I came up with three. They almost worked.

Rule number one: no giving the number out to friends. Since I acquired the phone for professional reasons, I designated the machine a work-only tool. This rule mildly pissed off a certain group of my close friends -- namely, the ones who had given me their cell-phone numbers, and, as registered Democrats, bear themselves in the world according to rather ruthless standards of "fairness." None of them came out and accused me of shafting them, but people don't purse their lips for nothing. Upset that they were upset by this rule, I immediately broke it, and gave the number to three carefully chosen friends, with the caveat that I would prefer they use the number only for emergencies. Although they agreed to my terms, we all define "emergency" in different ways, as I was vividly reminded one day when I inadvertently forgot . . .

Rule number two: treat the power button like the safety latch on a gun. The default position is "off." (This eliminates any risk of the canary in your pocket going off in business meetings, restaurants, or theaters.) Only once have I forgotten this rule, in a meeting with a former governor of Massachusetts who publicly prides himself on being a Luddite. Of course the phone rang, which sent me scrambling to kill the ringer, note the number on the caller-ID display, and apologize for the intrusion, all in one jittery gesture. (He raised his eyebrows, but did not purse his lips.) After the meeting, I returned the call, which had come from one of the three trusted friends. I prepared myself for the worst -- no doubt some kind of health crisis or car crash. His "emergency," however, was the understandable but ill-timed need to unburden himself of a panty-twist he'd gotten into over a boy he had just met online.

Rule number three: this is the easiest to follow. Always tell people, at the beginning of a call, that you're on a cell phone. This serves as a reminder to yourself and your caller that communicating by cell phone is not normal. When I'm alone, in transit, it feels wrong to be tethered to the comforts of familiar voices all the time. They take me out of being exactly where I am. But rule three isn't purely selfish; it's also intended to protect incoming callers from their own kind of disorientation. The golden rule again: when I receive a cellular call on my regular telephone, I'm always a little edgy because of not knowing where to place the caller. Is she driving in heavy traffic, and therefore liable to launch into a murderous road rage if I tell her I'm going to miss my deadline? Is he at a fancy restaurant having a great time with a bunch of friends that doesn't include me? Even if the sound quality of your call reveals right off that you're not in your office, it's somehow calming to name the elephant in the airwaves.

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I was doing a decent job of following my rules, but then the ruin of my manners began. I gave up my apartment in Boston and moved to the Cape, where I've been forced into quasi-nomadic existence while searching for the perfect place to live. I've had three temporary apartments in three months, so for simplicity's sake (with apologies to Thoreau) I've given my cell number to half the population of Massachusetts.

Liberal purveyance of your cell-phone number is a quick way to prove that power corrupts. When people know that they can reach you at any time, their sense of propriety goes out the window. People call my cell phone at all hours, even though they know that I usually keep the thing turned off. More significant, the messages they leave on my cell voice-mail often include sighs of exasperation that they must leave a message instead of speaking with me directly -- a tone of voice I've never heard in messages left on my regular answering machine.

But pissy voice-mails or no, I'm going to keep the thing turned off most of the time, and I'm going to keep fighting my battle to keep cell-phone calls to a minimum. I like solitude; I like looking at architecture; and I'd like not to lose those tastes. But the main reason I want to avoid becoming a cellular slave is summarized by a bit of folk wisdom given me by my personal trainer last spring: if you don't respect your own time, no one else will, either.

I feel about 40 years older than I am when I say this, but maybe that's for the good -- they used to have a word for people who were available at all times to all comers, and it rhymed with "bore."

Michael Joseph Gross is a freelance writer living in Provincetown.