Who are you calling?
You, who swerves your car through three lanes of traffic as you struggle to work the buttons on your cell phone. Who in God’s name could possibly be on the phone that is so important as to risk your life and those of half the interstate?
It’s 5AM! I would have thought that a trip to the gym at this hour, although bordering on insanity for so many other reasons, would at least be free from you buffoons with your heads glued to a couple ounces of plastic. Aren’t you too tired to be on the phone calling someone? Shouldn’t you be limiting yourself to drinking coffee and shaving in the rearview mirror without adding talking on the phone to the insanity? Why not sit back and listen to morning radio DJs inform you of what the traffic is like that you are already sitting in or what the weather is like that you can plainly see out your window? Yes, they are clearly redundant, but they need to work too!
But no, you rattle on on your cell phone. Come to think of it, who the hell are you talking to at 5AM anyway? What do you talk about with this person? “Phil, it’s me. Are you driving to work? … Yes, I also am driving to work.” Or, “Jane, it’s me. Listen, don’t wake up! It’s 5AM!… Yes, I just thought I would let you know in case you woke up confused and felt like you should be awake. But you should not be, because it is 5AM!” But it must be more than that, because you go on and on like some deranged sorority girl who has tossed and turned all night without a phone to her ear and has now woken up craving that morning fix.
You didn’t always used to have a phone everywhere you went, you know? Cell phones are fairly new, I imagine that you only acquired one within the last 10 years, so how can you be that dependent on it? You know, years ago, if someone wanted to talk on the phone in the car they needed to take miles of cable and a big bulky phone with a base and a handset attached by another cord, and it was REALLY hard to fit it in your pocket, and usually if you drove more than a mile someone else would run into the cable and yank it out of the wall in your house, so you’d have to go back and- all right! This was not the best example. But-
What was that? You just hit a button! You have ANOTHER call?! You are now talking to two people on the phone at 5AM while also eating a donut, drinking coffee, shaving, balancing your checkbook, changing your child’s diaper, trying to focus on a 3-D MagicEye, reading the paper, and playing chess on your palm pilot? Oh, and did I mention driving? Well, maybe I forgot because keeping the car on the road by bouncing it off the guard rails on either side is NOT driving in my book (available this Christmas from Penguin Publishing, ISBN 0-14-07.1458-8).
You disgust me, sir! I am just thankful that I do not have urgent calls to make at 5AM so that I can have a little time to myself before the rest of the day. Not that anyone calls me then, either, come to think of it. Or really at night, either. I think I am the only person I know who pays $4.99 a month for 10 minutes of service and still never uses them up, in fact. Huh.
Hello, Mom? It’s 5AM, go back to bed.