My Kryptonite

I’m not a phone guy. I like to talk but can’t stand these little time-wasting, microwave-driven, brain cancer-causing intrusions in my life. Much like the radio in my plane, cell phone usage should be limited to necessary communication. If you wanna talk to me, please use your voice. I look forward to it. I miss it. Apologies to my friends and family but why can’t you understand that I don’t “group chat?”

My phone “dinged” twenty six times in four minutes yesterday morning while I was working on a complex customer proposal. Thinking someone had an emergency, I glanced at my phone, only to see a family string of four word volleys and a picture of Sponge Bob with his eyes crossed and tongue hanging out. I hate Sponge Bob… the new millennium’s answer to Bugs Bunny.

I silenced my phone.

BZZZZZZ….BZZZZZZZZ…..BZZZZZZZ…. It didn’t stop. I tossed the annoyance into the hallway outside my office.

Someone walking by thought I had unknowingly dropped my life’s umbilical and silently set it back on my desk without me noticing. The thing’s like that creepy Chucky doll from a horror movie that just reappears outta nowhere. BZZZZZZ…. BZZZZZZ…. BZZZZZZ…..

Here’s the thing, I don’t chat. I’m a guy. I talk. I laugh. I yell…sometimes. If you want to “chat,” let me know and we can all meet at Theo’s 24 for drinks, conversation, and hands down the best food and service in a 300 mile radius. And it won’t require bifocals, spell check, or freakish little undersea cartoon characters to convey your digital emotion. I’ll even buy you a drink… you know… to bait you into live human interaction! (And we can all leave our cellular addictions in our cars… and make eye contact and everything!)

What happened to communication that this became the norm? And it’s not just with family and friends. I was in my home workshop last week at 8:30 pm putting the final coat of varnish on a project and got drawn into a text conversation with a customer who needed an “immediate” answer on the status of a pending project…due in October. (Every customer I have requires a 24/7 contact. That’s me. But he texted.)

For me, forced texting evokes a kind of frustrated man-panic, driven by the need to decode misspelled abbreviated microtext. What’s worse, I’m one of those annoying dinosaurs who has to text in complete sentences because I don’t want to be misunderstood or appear terse. Guess I haven’t figured out the whole texting protocol thing. And I’ve written off voice-to-text. Siri is my angry know-it-all girlfriend that misunderstands everything I say.

“Siri, search Holiday Automotive…”

“Happy holidays to you too Vince!”

Grrrrrr…. “Siri, search Holiday Automotive Service Department…”

“The next legal holiday in the US is Labor Day, Vince.”

“NO… HOLIDAY AUTOMOTIVE!”

“I found this on the web for whole pitted olives….”

[I’m surprised there’s not a resident app that would allow me to argue with Siri, with her finally saying in an annoyed condescending tone, “Well, Vince, if you wouldn’t speak like a drunken, toothless aborigine maybe I’d understand your yammering!” Followed by the sound of foot stomping across a hardwood floor and a slamming door.]

I seldom talk to customers on the phone anymore. They’ve become impossible to reach. Email is the preferred mode of communication. But I still leave voice mails. Voice mail has become the “chatty” voice version of email, so I make mine ridiculously long, knowing that people will get impatient during playback and call me for a live “controllable” version. It’s a trick I learned from my brother Chris, who manages to cover everything from a weekly weather briefer, the health of his cat, to Nancy Pelosi’s lazy eye when he leaves a voicemail.

I don’t think people intentionally dodge each other, although I’ve accused my kids of not answering their phones when I call, yet they have the amazing ability to text me right after. “My phone never rang.”

What we’re experiencing is the result of rapid social evolution driven by innovation. We humans have always been at the mercy of discovery and new technology. As cave dwellers we discovered fire and shortly after learned that we could burn a friend’s hair with a flaming stick. It’s not all good.

The technology that was designed to simplify and “connect” has made us overwhelmed, distracted, and disconnected. Technology has made us busier than we’ve ever been. My computer is an essential tool, giving me the ability to organize and generate reports with amazing efficiency and accuracy. But from the “ability” to create reports has come the perceived “need” to generate more and more data, much of which is just redundant fluff; “drilling down” into the statistical core of center earth where only pale IT hobbits dwell.

Cell phones have followed suit. With the ability for basic flip-phone communication has come the perceived need for 24/7 connectivity, syncing all of our life’s essential devices onto an interactive driver-accessible platform. It’s become crucial to have the ability to answer texts and emails at any time or check critical time-sensitive information on Facebook. (Apparently rumble strips on highways were designed to assist texters with straight-line navigation, demonstrated by the several head-bent lane-drifting drivers that passed me on my cycle this week. Thanks for all the stones!)

Like our ancestor’s hair-burning flaming stick…. It’s not all good.

Maybe digital overload is why I see fewer people smiling, exercising emojis rather than their facial muscles.

Ok, ok , ok…. Enough about phones! For Superman it was Kryptonite…