We’re available, thanks to cellular telephones

  • Donna Britt / Washington Post columnist
  • Sunday, February 17, 2002 9:00pm
  • Opinion

WASHINGTON — Among my indelible, recent Christmas memories: My son, 16, sitting a few feet from the new computer, video game and clothes he’d received, looking vaguely … unhappy.

Yes, unhappy. Santa hadn’t brought him a cell phone.

Such is the power of cell phones, a power that the world is just beginning to recognize — though close to a billion of us have used one.

I’m not talking about cell phones’ power to disrupt the sincerest conversation, the most vital meeting or the most hushed theater. I don’t mean my own phone’s genius for ringing whenever I’m signing a check at the supermarket as I balance my keys, wallet and handbag while arguing with my youngest over whether he "needs" a Hershey bar.

The power I’m referring to was described by Frank Nuovo, designer of Nokia’s insanely popular line of cell phones, in an article in the New Yorker. His only goal, Nuovo told writer Michael Specter, is "to create something that people need to have." Something they want "for the same reason a woman buys a fabulous dress or … car. You might need the dress or the car.

"But you also have to want it."

My son Darrell wanted a cell phone so badly that he finally bought his own — as well as the airtime he pays for in $25 increments. Now he, his older brother, his dad and I all have cell phones.

Only our 6-year-old doesn’t have one. Yet.

Last year, Patrick Terry, then 15, desired a phone so powerfully that he negotiated the purchase of a sleek Nokia 3390 — complete with games, a phone book and instant online messaging — with his mom, Nicki.

To Patrick’s mom, cell phone ownership is "a privilege, not an entitlement. He had to show he was responsible."

So Patrick, of Silver Spring, Md., had to "get good grades, do good in summer school," he recalls. "It took four months."

Why was having a cell phone so important?

"For emergencies," Patrick quickly responds. Pressed, he admits, "A couple of my other friends had phones. … If you have a phone, you’re a little bit cooler. You feel like you have your own individual freedom."

Coolness and freedom, plus security. No wonder cell phones have become increasingly irresistible — and to people a lot older than Patrick. Soon, Nuovo insists, owning one phone will seem as odd as owning a single pair of shoes. Ours is becoming a cell phone nation. Before long, the United States — which by year’s end will have more than 130 million residents with phone contracts — may resemble Finland, Nokia’s home base. There, tens of thousands of moms stuff phones into their 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds’ backpacks. Half of all 10-year-olds carry them.

Many Americans worry about the devices’ proliferation. That includes Maryland Del. John S. Arnick. He hopes that a recent five-fatality car accident, which may have been related to cell phone use, will jump-start his bill to fine motorists up to $500 for dialing while driving.

For months after my last cell phone broke, I avoided buying a new one. The model I’d owned invariably shut off near tall trees and even decent-size shrubs. Often, it tempted me to call people I had no need to speak to.

And I was unnerved by seeing countless cell phone users — eyes down and mouths working — moving blindly past the life that pulsed around them.

Aren’t people already disconnected enough? Are we that afraid of keeping our own counsel?

But my desire to be connected prevailed. Soon after purchasing a phone that made my kids, husband and colleagues instantly available to me, I realized why part of me despises cell phones:

They make me instantly available, too. And in a chaotic world, what I crave is solitude. Being available, for brief stretches, anyway, only to me.

Of course I can turn the phone off, and sometimes do. And yet …

Listen to my oldest son, a college student in Philadelphia who abhors the posing and inane chatter that so often characterizes cell phone use: "All these kids at the mall calling up their friends and saying, ‘Yo, I just got on the escalator. … I’m passing Eddie Bauer. … There’s Foot Locker! Wait — my big toe’s itching!’ "

But after Sept. 11, he asked for a phone and got one. Hundreds of miles from home, he — and we — wanted at least the illusion of being able to instantly connect.

We aren’t alone. Nicki Terry is surprised at how happy she is with Patrick’s phone, even though it adds to her own occasional sense of being too available. "That bothered me a whole lot at first," she says. But it’s nice that Patrick can call me if he needs to tell me something. In that way, I love cell phones. I love being available."

Donna Britt can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200.

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