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Mary Had A Little Phone


       John Sheirer
Mark dropped two quarters into his son Jeff's outstretched hand as he finished
breakfast and headed toward the door. Jeff's freshman basketball team had an away game
that night.

"Give us a call from the pay phone when you get back to the school so we can pick you up,"
Mark said.

Jeff pocketed the quarters, then, with half a smile, said, "I wouldn't need the quarters if I had a
cell phone."

Mark gave him the dirty look Jeff expected, and they both chuckled. This scene had been
repeated for nearly two years of mornings when Jeff needed to call for a ride home.

Jeff was angling for a cell phone.

Outside the kitchen window, a squirrel scampered up the pole toward the bird feeder where
it encountered the large salad bowl Mark had installed upside-down halfway up the pole.
Even a creature as acrobatic and gravity-defying as a squirrel wasn't going to get through
Mark's salad bowl line of defense.

And Jeff wasn't going to get a cell phone.

Mark just got a cell phone himself a year ago, long after it seemed to have been decreed by
the king of the world that every peasant get one. He kept it in the glove box of his car where it
would be handy in case of an accident or the inevitable traffic jam that will require the "I'm-
going-to-be-late" call to home or work, depending on whether he happened to be coming or
going. Accidents and traffic jams cover two-thirds of the times Mark has used his cell phone.
For a while, he also checked his messages at work. That's pretty much it.

Mark has had one accident since he got the phone. He was rear-ended by an eighty-year-old
woman while sitting in the Dunkin Donuts drive-through line. She spilled her purse and
jammed on the gas when she reached down to get it, plowing into the back of Jeff's car. He
lent her his cell phone to call her insurance company while he rubbed his sore neck. Her
insurance ended up paying for everything.

Mark had to make the "late" call maybe three times in the past year, and he stopped checking
his office messages from the car about six months ago. People actually expected him to call
back if he got their messages, so there really didn't seem to be a point to getting those
messages early.

If pressured, Mark would have to confess that he did use the phone for one other purpose.
When he first got it, he called a few friends with some big news.

"Hey, guess what?" he asked. "I got a cell phone." After a dramatic pause, he continued, "And
I'm talking to you on it right now."

The friends didn't share Mark's amazement, considering most of them had owned cell phones
for the better part of a decade.

"What's your number," his friends had asked, "so I can program it into my cell phone."

"I don't know," Mark replied.

And he didn't know for weeks. He figured that if he didn't know his own number, then he
couldn't tell anyone what it is, and no one will ever call him. So far, that strategy seemed to be
working.

If Mark had to, he could find out what his cell number is. He devised a high-tech method for
keeping it handy. He wrote it on a strip of masking tape stuck to the back of the phone.

Mark really doesn't want anyone calling him. When they call, they always seem to want
something. They want Mark to do something, go somewhere, think about something, and give
advice on their love life.

And those calls are just from his friends. God forbid any telemarketers got hold of his
number. He'd never get any peace.

Maybe he's old fashioned, but Mark just doesn't want the silence of his car shattered by a
ringing phone. His drive time is about the only private, contemplative time in his busy day. If
he wanted those cherished moments disrupted by obnoxious noise, he'd just tune in to Rush
Limbaugh.

Mark isn't really thrilled with the cell phone etiquette shown by the general public. For
example, he was at lunch the other day when he heard a tinkling version of "Mary had a Little
Lamb" break out a few booths behind him. He recognized right away that this was a cell
phone programmed to play a song rather than an old-fashioned ring like his own phone. He
pictured a fourteen-year-old girl getting the call, maybe someone from his son Jeff's school—
because, of course, Jeff claims to be the only person there without a cell phone.

When Mark turned around to give this teenybopper a dirty look, he saw a middle-aged
businessman in a suit flipping open his phone.

"What?" the guy barked with a mouth half full of cheeseburger. "No, goddamn it! That report
better be on my desk by the time I get back from lunch, or your ass is fired!"

That wasn't the kind of person Mark wants Jeff to become.

On his way out, Mark dropped a couple of quarters on the guy's table.

"What's that for?" the guy asked.

Mark pointed toward the pay phone on the wall by the entrance. "Next time, give Mary and
her little lamb a rest."

Then Mark got in his car and dug in the glove box for his cell phone. Finally he had
discovered another use for the annoying little gizmo. He stared at it while rummaging
through his mental roll-a-dex trying to recall any friend's phone number because he just had
to call someone to describe the look on that guy's face.



© John Sheirer

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