Cellphones

Last week I was talking to somebody when suddenly we got interrupted. "Excuse me for a minute" the man said. He grasped his mobile phone out of his pocket and turned it on. Than he walked away, leaving me to wait for ages.
While I was standing there, I became aware of the power of that piece of electronics. It must be impossible to ignore the unknown caller. Every call could contain a potential important message. Was that the attraction of the cellphone? I still live in the dinosaur age, not being able to handle a cellphone properly. Now I must admit that talking on the phone is not my favourite pas time. I like to talk to people in person. Furthermore, a speech and language therapist told me once that not all sounds are transmitted over the line. That means that you hear only some sounds in a word on the phone. Your brain fills in the gaps from it's memory. With English as my second language I don't seem to have a database with English sounds. This makes the phone an even more difficult form of communication for me.
For most people however the cellphone seems to be an extension of their arms. They use it in the car, supermarket, anywhere. They use it to bully and even to find a boy or girlfriend. My husband told me that when he spent some time in a Dutch pub a few years ago, he noticed that teenagers threw coasters towards the opposite sex. My brother explained to him that people write their cellphone numbers on it. When a particular boy or girl is interested, they respond with a text message.
For me the cellphone has a big advantage as well however. I am able now to reach my children at all times. Like last time when one of them was late. I thought ha, I will track you down with my cellphone-------------it was turned off!

Call you later, Marja