Cell Phones are Evil...

Do you remember those days...you know...like...in 1994...when your phone didn't follow you around wherever you went? If you were lucky you had a cordless phone in your house and maybe a pager. Most of us still had that green phone mounted on our kitchen wall...the one that our parents put up when they invented that new fangled dial tone technology. My grandparents had the same black rotary dial phone on their living room wall until at least 1999.

My first job was working at the Target on West Broadway in North Minneapolis. Alas...the only Target (and discount housing goods chain) in the black neighborhood in Minneapolis was closed a couple of years ago and replaced with a Cub Foods. But back to cell phones...at my first job at Target in 1992, I worked in cameras and sound. About half way through my first year there we started selling cell phones. These were the cell phones that came out right after you stopped having to carry around a briefcase sized battery pack with you in order to use it. I thought they were very utile since not only could you make calls at your convienience, you could also build lean muscle mass in the process. At the time Target starting selling cell phones they cost anywhere from $99 to $400, and the service plans, at their cheapest, cost around 25 cents a minute. Plus, you couldn't even BUY a phone unless you also purchased a service plan at the same time.

And that was ugly...it was easier to get a mortgage at that time than it was to get your credit approved for a cell phone. For most people that came into the store, I was required to collect a deposit on their account ranging from $200-$1000. You should have seen folks' faces when I said...great...here's your phone...here's your plan details...that'll be $1,099 please. We take cash, check, or credit. I guess that'll be cash or check for you. Next please.

On a side note...I think there were some nuns running a shady electronics ring out of their convent in the neighborhood. First of all, they were rollin' in a BMW. Second of all about once a month the sisters (who were all sistas) would come in and buy a bunch of tvs and vcrs, which I would have to haul out to their BMW and load up. Plus...their habits were grey and white instead of black and white. I think they were in some kind of Catholic Women Religious Gang. Like the JC Northsiders or something like that.

Again, back to cell phones. Around 2002 or so...cell phones became dirt cheap. Companies started giving the bad boys away. That's how I got mine. I signed up on a special friends and family plan through a friend of mine's office, and Sprint sent me a little blue flip phone in the mail. I was still in college, so it was hit or miss if you called me in any given month if the phone would be on since I was a little bit lax about paying the bill. Plus, I still had a phone at home. I'm pretty sure I had free long distance right away...but I was forever going over my minutes. Luckily, Sprint is more user friendly to the poor negro. Instead of requiring a deposit to open your account, they check your credit rating and give you a spending limit. My limit is $200, which basically lets me use my phone for two months without paying my bill. But should you reach that magical number...they shut that bad boy off right then and there with a quickness. There's a been a couple of times that I've gone to use my phone, know I paid my bill the month before, and dang it if the darn thing was like...you need to make a payment of at least 62 cents to bring your bill back under the 200 dollar limit.

Now I only have a cell phone, as do most of my friends. The land lines have been ditched for one monthly phone bill. And it sucks. I used to be able to tell people...oh...I didn't get your message the answering machine ate it. Or, I am just never home with enough time to call you back. Or...I can't be on that conference call because I'll be on the road at that time. Now...if you don't call back within 20 minutes...you get another call, a text message, picture mail, and an email that's been mailed directly from their handset to your home computer.  Add to that the fact that every phone has a tracking device implanted into it...and it's like we've given the FBI and everyone else a way to find us at any given moment. They should just merge all the cell service providers and incorporate under the name Big Brother Wireless.

I've even heard of court cases where the prosecution has used the fact that a defendent left his or her cell phone at home the night of the alleged crime as evidence that they were being purposefully sneaky and didn't want to be able to be found. Ain't that some shit. Leave your cell phone at home and accidentally run down some elderly person and it goes straight from vehicular manslaughter to murder one. No wonder Texas has run up their light bill executing folks...if the people on death row had just remembered their cell phones they'd all be out on house arrest with one of those ankle bracelets instead of strapped to a chair with a sponge on their head hopin' that the Governor will answer his cell phone and get their last minute appeal request. Unless he left it at home...

The truth is that I love my phone...I just don't love the access that it gives people. That's of course why I just don't call people back until I feel like it. Plus...I have never been a big fan of talking on the phone. I much prefer to write long rambling blogs that take up band width, which, I'm sure is responsible for so many cell phones with bad reception.

Comments

[-Izzati-]

Cell phones :D