This article originally appeared in issue # 23 of my ‘zine METANOIA. Scroll to the bottom of this post for info on sample issues and subscriptions.
I read something years ago in a biography of Henry Miller where an acquaintance of Miller’s talked about Miller’s aversion to banks. I don’t know that he necessarily “hated” banks or had a phobia about them. He just didn’t like them, didn’t feel comfortable going into them, and, in fact, avoided going into them at all.
As a result, according to this acquaintance, Miller often had numerous uncashed and undeposited checks in his home which would have certainly helped him out financially during a time that he sometimes desperately needed it, “but he wouldn’t go inside a bank.”
I understand how Henry felt, because I feel that way about the phone.
I used to think that cellphones and cellphone culture was what I hated. But I own an Android smartphone, and I love it. It’s Star Trek technology come to life. Like nearly everyone else over the age of seven in western civilization (as well as most of eastern civilization), I carry it with me everyplace I go. It’s mainly my link to the internet, but it’s so much more. Just this morning I’ve used it not just for internet and social media, but to send an email, check the weather (essential for springtime in Vermont), watch a birding video, run a timer to make a grilled cheese sandwich, jot down (in the memo pad function) an idea for a story, take a couple pictures, pay for an item on eBay… all just in the five hours since I’ve awoken.
I wouldn’t say my smartphone is “indispensable,” but it’s one of my most frequently-used technological tools. With apologies to Gene Roddenberry, it’s better than a communicator OR a tricorder; kind of the best of both, and it fits into my pocket…
…but oddly, seeing as it’s generically referred to as a “phone,” I seldom if ever make or take calls on it.
I love my smartphone, but I hate “the phone,” if that makes sense.
The distinction, to me, is between the handy little pocketsized device that allows me to perform all those functions and many others quickly and easily, and the actual telephone feature of that device… the mobile phone technology, in other words.
More than the technology itself, though, I hate the cultural conventions and expectations that surround notjust cellphones, but “the phone” generically.
I realized that this isn’t necessarily solely about cell-phones a few summers ago, when I spent some time at my parents’ house, helping them out while my mom had surgery. Almost every night, Mom would go to her usual fuss (“Oh, it’s not a fuss”) and trouble (“Oh, it’s no trouble!”) to make and serve a nice formal sitdown meal for me, my dad, and her. She’d set the table just so, apportion the servings just so, take those servings to the appointed places at the table, and we’d sit down to this nicely-set table of this fantastic mom-cooked meal; my Dad would say as much of his traditional family grace as he could remember (“Bless us, O Lord, that we may taste in grace and gratitude. Bless us that we may not waste a morsel of thy food. Bless the bread, and bless the meat, and bless us all who humbly eat”), and then, as we started to eat, first my dad would complain under his breath that it was “too much food,” and second, on at least four out of seven nights, sometimes immediately, sometimes following a four or five minute grace period, we would hear…
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG from the phone on the kitchen counter.
As one of them (usually Mom) would get up from their hot meal to answer it, thus committing to whomever or whatever was on the line for the duration of the call, I’d say “You know, you have an answering machine. We’re eating. Just let it ring through.”
But they always picked up.
It made me realize that one of my biggest objections to phone culture– not just cellphone culture, but phone culture dating back decades– is the unwritten, unspoken law that WHENEVER THE FUCKING THING RINGS, WHEREVER YOU ARE, WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING, IT’S EXPECTED THAT YOU WILL DROP EVERYTHING AND PICK UP.
“Whereever you are” is perhaps the thing I hate most about “the phone” on a cellphone. There is no end to the list of “whereevers” that people feel totally comfortable not only placing and taking calls, but speaking during those calls in a loud voice about proprietary, sensitive, private information. Busses, bus stops, trains, train stations, grocery stores, gas pumps, restaurants, restaurant rest rooms, hotel lobbies, hiking paths, picnic tables at parks… those are nothing. I won’t even try to catalog my most egregious “places that have become a phone booth;” your list would probably trump1 mine anyway.
Suffice to say that anyplace where one might go hoping to not hear someone yammering on a phone has become someplace you’re likely to encounter someone yammering on a phone.
Further, that old school expectation of my parents’ (“If someone calls, you pick up”) has carried over to “the phone” on mobile devices:
If they call, you must pick up.
If you call, they must pick up.
Whenever the call occurs.
Wherever you or they are when it occurs.
And that’s why cellphone culture and I don’t get along. Sorry, but I drop everything for very few things (close friends or family in need spring to mind), and phone calls are not one of them.
That’s my cultural objection, one that I’m sure many people share, but my other objection, as stated above, is technological. For as advanced as the other tech on my smartphone is (lightning fast internet, HD camera capable of taking still photos and HD video footage, plus apps to edit those pieces, etc etc etc), the actual phone on a cellphone, quite frankly, sucks. I still have no idea where the actual mouthpiece is on the thing. It feels impossible to hold the phone to my ear AND my mouth at the same time. The sound quality of the call is awful, and since I can barely hear the caller, I naturally assume that the caller can’t hear me, SO I SCREAM INTO IT!!!
Yes, I’m one of those people who screams into their phone when I’m on a call. (Except I’m not. Because I’m never on a call. Ha, ha.)
This takes me back to Miller and his problem with banks. I dislike “the phone” on my smartphone so much that I do not use it even when I “need to.” Walking back from the grocery store today, I thought of three recent examples where I could have, should have, but…
~ I dropped my last vehicle off at a mechanic’s and they called back and told me that the car (a 2000 Subaru) has underbody damage that renders it not only irreparable, but “condemnable;” and would I please call them to arrange getting the tags, etc so that they could donate it to charity as salvage…
…TWO WEEKS AGO. I haven’t called back yet. It would mean using “the phone.”
~ Since my last employer closed because of the pandemic, I was eligible for and receiving pandemic unemployment assistance, and over the past winter, I went through a spell where those benefits lapsed. With no income coming in, I applied for food stamps online. After a few days, the state agency sent me a letter telling me that I needed to call to arrange an interview to review my eligibility for the program. At that point in the winter, the extra $200 or so boost in monthly grocery money would have been HUGE, but I couldn’t stand the idea of doing a benefits interview on “the phone.”
So I never called and the deadline passed.
~ A Neville-based teacher whom I really admire passed on word to a mutual acquaintance that he’d gotten copies of this letter that I’d sent him, and he wanted to get my phone number. Part of me would love to chat with him and have a dialogue of the kind that is so rare around these teachings and the people who are familiar with them (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: too many self-styled “Neville coaches,” of which this fellow is, refreshingly, not one).
But I’d have to do it on “the phone.” And… well, reference my objections stated above.
I told our mutual acquaintance to pass on that “I’m not a phone person.” (Insert You and he can tell me what kind of sociopathic misanthrope you think I am; I won’t mind here.)
Like Miller’s uncashed checks, opportunities come in via “the phone,” and I let them slip away. It’s not that I don’t appreciate them or the potential that they might represent; it’s just that, like Hawkeye Pierce refusing to brandish a firearm in a foxhole (“I HATE GUNS THAT MUCH!”), I just hate “the phone” that much.
I’m not sure what to add to this, except that the last time I went home to see my parents (last year around this time), we were eating one of my mom’s amazing homecooked suppers, and, after Dad’s “TOO! MUCH! FOOD! MARGE!” came the obligatory BBBRRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGG!
Mom didn’t move.
Dad said “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Mom stabbed a forkful of meatloaf. “We’re eating. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.”
And she popped the forkful into her mouth, and the phone, after four more rings, was silent.
No message left; no disturbance.
Progress, however miniscule, is progress.
- Are we allowed to use that verb again yet, or is it too soon? Or has it taken on other meanings? ↩︎
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Max Harrick Shenk, writer 