According to the NY Times (10/23, B1-5), I am a member of a small and shrinking minority known at the “cell refuseniks”–those people who refuse to own a cell phone.

Now most of the people who do not have cell phones (a mere 15% of the population) do so because they “are older” or “less educated” or “unable to afford phones.”  These reasons are not mine.  (Well, I am “older,” but not so old that I cannot punch buttons.)  So I am among the refuseniks–the 5% of the 15% (that would be, let me see my calculator) less than 1% of the population–exactly .75%!  I have never felt so lonely.  Others all around me–walking down the street, riding bicycles, waiting for prescriptions to be filled or movies to start, in church, in business meetings, on trains, in restaurants, during serious conversations about death or breaking up with your boyfriend, and of course in automobiles everywhere–all these others are chatting away to their friends and business acquaintances, while I walk through the world alone. 

And, yes, I have made this choice.  Why, you may say, why?

Because I want to be present in this world.  It’s that simple.  I want to be with the people I’m with.  I want to see the fall leaves.  I want to notice the bicyclists when I drive (I worry so about them).  And another thing.  I am grossly offended–please note this, cell phone users–grossly offended when I am engaged with someone in what I consider a significant conversation, exchanging words carefully and respectfully, and that person interrupts our intercourse by answering a cell phone ring (often an offensive sound in its own right) and then begins another conversation in my presence.  And I am similarly offended when forced to hear one end of someone else’s conversation, which may be intimate or loud or boring or all three.

There are reasons for people to own a cell phone.  I understand that.  Single moms who need to know where their teenagers are.  People who take emergency calls of one kind or another.  Women (or men) who drive alone at night on deserted roads in undependable cars. That’s about it.  But wait!  What about business calls?  Business calls are not human emergencies. 

Someone asked me once, “What if a genie appeared to you and told you that you could make 3 inventions disappear from the earth–what would they be?”  Well, of course, you’d have to go for the weapons, wouldn’t you–the intercontinental ballistic weapons systems, the land mines, the nuclear bombs of all kinds, etc., etc.  But given that the weapons were gone, I know what my next two would be: cars and cell phones.  The planet might survive.  And I could tell my friend about my . . . well, about my life, without being interrupted.