senior-spectrum.com - Larry Miller

Why Don’t We Let Cell Phones Really Be Cell Phones

If you see someone with his right hand pressed against his ear and his left hand holding up his right elbow, don’t ask for an autograph. It’s probably not Jack Benny. It’s more likely to be someone speaking into a cell phone so small as to be invisible.

If they make cell phones any smaller, a person will be able to hold it in his or her mouth while speaking. I remember a harmonica player who played a tiny mouth organ that way, but he was on the stage trying to make a living. I don’t know why a person would choose to chew on a telephone while making a call, but I’ll bet that it will come to that someday.

The practice of making cell phones smaller and smaller won’t end until someone swallows one of them while eating in a restaurant and both the phone manufacturer and restaurateur get sued for millions of dollars. It’s really stupid, but the jury will go along with it. I wish I could be on that jury. Not that I would vote for awarding the dining dialer a single buck — I just want to be part of that kind of history in the making.

Not only are they making cell phones smaller and smaller, they are designing them to do more and more things. Cell phones can now take pictures, play computer games, take messages and show movies. It’s this last one that bugs me the most.

I was sitting in a movie house the other day and in the row in front of me some kid was watching a movie on his cell phone instead of on the big screen. This really upset me. I didn’t know which flick to watch, the one the screen or the one on the cell phone. When I was a kid we could go to the movies to see a double feature, but we had to watch them one at a time. Now, it is possible to watch both at once. On Saturdays they also gave us kids a little bag of candy as part of the price of admission. I’ll bet cell phones can’t do that.

At the same time that cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, desk phones are getting larger and larger. My own phone came complete with fax capabilities, copying facility, automatic dialing, a speaker phone and a little window which tells me what I did wrong when I can’t get any of the above to work. On my desk I have my computer screen, a mouse pad, my phone and my answering machine. It’s a good thing I don’t own a pencil and a yellow pad to write on. I would have no place on my desk to use them.

One of the great things about my desk telephone is the built-in speaker phone. When I dial someplace with a computer answering system, I don’t have to hold the earpiece to my ear while being given the menu for how to reach another talking computer instead of the person to whom I wish to speak.

There are times when I use the telephone because I don’t want to speak to anyone. I use it as a fax machine. I just dial the number I want and fax a message to somebody at the other end of the line. No listening to computers which think they are smarter than I am. Maybe they are, but I don’t want them proving it on my nickel.

But, to get back to cell phones, I would like to see them become real cell phones. That is, to be used only in prison cells. That would mean that they should arrest anyone who uses a cell phone in a restaurant, theater, movie house, concert hall or any place where I happen to be. I would be all for those kinds of cell phones.

Finally, a word to the people who make those new disposable cell phones. You can dispose of any phone you think I might buy. We can cut out the middleman and you can toss it in the trash heap right now. I have never used a cell phone, don’t ever plan to use a cell phone and will never disturb anyone near me by talking on a cell phone. If I want to bother someone who uses a cell phone in a restaurant, movie house, theater or concert hall, I don’t need one of those instruments of the devil to do it. I can just talk out loud. Or better yet, write a column. That should bug them.

Humor columnist Larry Miller is a former television writer who has penned lines for Dick Van Dyke, Ed McMahon, Jack Paar and many others, and for shows including "The Dating Game," "Beat the Clock" and "Petticoat Junction." In 1985, he began his weekly newspaper column on the lighter side of getting older.

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