My roommate Brent just informed me that no Sprint phones in the St. Louis have been ringing since this weekend. Now, my initial reaction was “this is great,” but on further consideration, I think I’m going to upgrade my reaction to a mixture of finger pointing, laughter, and a little dance that I do with my wall phone as I push the button to cycle between “Ringer A” and “Ringer B.”
Oh sweet, sweet music.
Now before you get too excited, you have to realize that the cell phones still essentially work. According to Brent, everyone can make calls, and they can receive messages, but their phone just doesn’t ring and caller ID doesn’t work. So really, the only problem is that they don’t get instant gratification when one of their millions of friends wants to talk to them.
Oh my God. We need to do something.
This means that hundreds of people have to check voicemail like the rest of us to see if someone called. It means that they have to dial numbers instead of just automatically pushing the caller ID thing. And worst of all, this means that they are walking to class completely unaware of whether or not their friends are also walking to class.
Oh my God. We need to do something.
But before you panic, remember the following: Fuck you. [not you, mom].
Do you think it’s easy not having a cell phone? Do you think I like being in the kitchen and missing a call because I can’t run around the table, into my room and then gracefully pick the phone up from its cradle? Do you think I like waiting all day to come home and check my messages to see if anyone called me when I was walking to class?
Do you think I like picking up the phone and pressing “talk” without any idea of who it is? It could be anyone. It could be a psycho death murderer. But I don’t know. Why? Because I don’t have call waiting or a little phone book built into my wall phone. I can’t even play snake.
But at least my phone rings. It always has (except for the time I accidentally turned the ringer off and couldn’t figure it out for a week).
“Yo, my phone won’t ring.”
“Did you check the ringer?”
“No. That’s not it. I think it’s broken.”
Sure enough. . .
But enough about me. Okay, so the cell phones don’t ring. We’ve established that. But it isn’t like they can’t check voice mail every ten minutes if they wanted to. And we all know that once they do start going off it’s going to be in the middle of class. Ten of them, all at once. “What’s up. I’m going to class, where are you?”
Still, we should be sympathetic. We should remember that the cell phones don’t ring. Oh JESUS! I get it now. THEY DON’T FUCKING RING. What? And they’ve been like this THREE WHOLE DAYS. Did Bin Laden do it? Can we bomb somebody? This is fucking awful [hi mom].

Something needs to be done about this. Oh. I’ve got it. This Friday, from noon until one in Mallinckrodt bring your cell phones. They still might not work, but don’t worry. For $5 I’ll let you borrow my phone and you can switch it back and forth between “Ringer A” and “Ringer B.”
Happy thought: Lest people get the impression that I’m always angry and bitter, I’ve decided to add a happy thought to the end of this column (even though Brent claims that I’ve plagiarized it from Adam Sandler). Anyway, I’d like to request that everyone not wear jackets yet, even though it is getting cold. The reason: hooded sweatshirts facilitate by far the best hugs of any season. They offer the perfect amount of cushiness so you can really give a strong, friendly hug. Bring it on Wade.
Realistic Thought: Marisa (I saw your column before it went to print), do you look at my picture? Did you see that I’m missing an ear and a shoulder, but that’s okay (apparently) because I have a weird gray blob attached to my cheek?

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2001 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.