Incident # 1

Adventure on the road to becoming a cell phone owner. Part I:

Now, although I have had my cell phone for almost three months now, the decision to get one at all was a hard one. For moral reasons (the killing of gorillas in the Congo due to the mining of colton: a cell phone component), for social reasons (I believe cell phones have made people rude and inconsiderate).

But life conspired to make me discard my long held beliefs on the cell phone debate and become one of the social lemmings. So here is the story of how that happened. Although many incidents – with increasing frequency – lead me to the decision, I will share my two favourite ones:

Incident #1:

So I hit the streets about 1:00, headphones blaring, cigarette lit, walk brisk(ish). I had planned the best route heading for “RP” (Or “Rendezvous Point” for the uninitiated) – TD Square. Good to go. Off I went, sure that the karma gods were back on my side and that lunch with my friend was going to go off without a hitch. The weather was beautiful, I had my bearing – North by North-East, and I was optimistic that our rendezvous was imminent.

The mall was under mass construction/re-construction and it took the better part of 10 minutes to locate the mall directory once I arrived at TD Square. I then stood there in utter disbelief, scanning and then reading each store name slowly until I had to resign myself to the very real fact that the RP no longer existed. I, in fact, stood there so long I attracted the attention of two security guards who, I am convinced, believed me to be illiterate, as no one needs to read the directory for such an extended length of time. They flanked me on either side; their faces set in “customer service” mode, and asked if they could help me. I explained my predicament and they hopped on the radio and inquired of Dispatch the location of my RP. No go. Not only did it no longer exist, but no one could tell me where it used to be, so that I could stand outside the boarded up store to wait.

The one security guard then asked me if I could just phone my friend that I was meeting and pick a different RP. I shook my head in resignation... “I was just standing here contemplating how badly I need to give up and buy a cell phone.” Ever helpful, he suggested I make use of the pay phone and pointed down the hall. I thanked him and moved on.

I made my way to the pay phone and rummaged through my purse, only to discover that I had not brought my phone book, so did not have my phone numbers with me. I thought to myself, I am both a resourceful and intelligent woman, I can procure said phone number through some old fashion leg work (don’t be silly, I wasn’t going to walk anywhere... I didn’t have time). So I again dipped into my purse, this time in search of 35 cents to make a phone call. Nope, I had loonies and pennies. Neither of which were going to help me make a phone call. Oh, back to the “leg-work” portion of the story, I had decided in all my resourcefulness to phone the office and have someone go to my desk and retrieve the phone number I was in search of. In the absence of proper change I figured I would just phone the office collect. Thwarted again... it would appear government phones are not in the habit of accepting collect phone calls, no matter who is calling or why.

Well, I figured, having not depleted my stores of either resourcefulness or intelligence, I would walk over to Orange Julius and procure myself some nourishment to complete my mission. I asked of the nice cashier for some dimes and quarters in my change and headed back to the pay phone. I put in my 35 cents only to be asked for an additional 15. When had the cost of pay phones gone up?? I vaguely remembered some conversation about it in the past, but was unable to recall the exact details; I was far too distracted wondering if local drug dealers were passing off the additional cost to their customers... given the fact that it is basically common knowledge that only drug dealers use pay phones. But I got myself back on task and I phoned the office as planned... I retrieved the phone number from one of the clerks, thanked her and ended the call. Alas success!!

I then fed my last remaining quarters into the pay phone and crossed my fingers that my friend’s cell phone was on and that she would answer it. AHHH Mission Accomplished (and not like Bush’s mission accomplished after he invaded Iraq, but legitimately mission accomplished), she answered. All told, this incident dragged out almost an hour.

This was yet another adventure that helped me come to the conclusion that it was time to get a cell phone... although, to be fair this adventure would not have been worth telling had I had a cell phone.

Postscript: You will note that my refusal to own a cell phone did not preclude the necessity of my friends being cell phone owners. It was in fact imperative that if I did not own one, others must... otherwise there would be chaos. Don’t ask for it to make sense. It obviously did in my mind.