Well, after having resisted doing so for many, many years, my wife and I finally drank the Kool-Aid and got cellphones. Our landline is going away as of tomorrow. So if I haven’t already notified you via email, and you need my new phone number, get in touch and I’ll get it to you.
It’s actually cheaper to get these than to have the landline, which is very surprising. But now that we have a car, I actually feel better that my wife will have a phone with her if something happens.
Matt and I were joking last night about how much newer cellphones look like Star Trek communicators. I’m sure this joke is old and tired, but it was particularly vivid in my reality last night.
My first job out of high school (this is 1987 for those keeping score) was assembling “bag phones.” Cellular phones were just starting to hit the mainstream, though most of them were the install-permanently-into-your-car variety. My job was to take one of these phones, which had the handset and a large transceiver (about the size of a shoebox), install them into a camera bag, add an antenna and solder a cigarette-lighter plug for power, and put a short stubby cellphone antenna into the package. Boom! Instant portablity! “The ultimate in mobile communications.” Back in da day. And now this phone is almost too small to be useful in terms of stretching from my ear to my mouth. Very funny.