As I’ve mentioned before, I have no cell phone.
My lack of cell phone mystifies a lot of people, and for good reason: 1/4 of under-30s now go cell-only. People I’m setting up interviews with can’t understand that I don’t have a mobile number to be reached at and I think this makes them a little suspicious.
Yesterday I was on a plane from Toronto to Montreal and was seated next to Leo, a Hasidic Jew from New York City. He was curious about my favorite movies as “his people don’t watch movies.” As the conversation progressed it somehow came out that I didn’t have a cell phone. He was absolutely shocked, he asked “How do you have fun?” He proceeded to pull out his new top of the line cell phone and BlackBerry Pearl to show off. This man also knew about craiglist.org, which added to my overall surprise about his tech savvy considering the movie ban. The surprise was compounded by the fact that I had been talking with a director at a teleco earlier that day and he hadn’t heard of craigslist which made me think maybe it was a generational thing. Meanwhile, Leo is giving me looks of “what, you think I’m stupid?” when I asked him if he knew about craigslist.
The “1/4 under-30s cell-only ” story talks about party lines. Does anyone reading this even know what a party line is? Not surprisingly (based on my prior post), my family operated on a party line for many years. The rules we had for talking over the party line - don’t talk about the neighbour’s kids, etc - are probably good rules to extend to today’s cell conversations.