I finally broke down and got a cellphone a couple of years ago.

Up until that point, I didn’t use them, and I  wouldn’t borrow them to make a call because I couldn’t figure out how to talk into it the right way. Above all I could not understand how people built lives and relationships around text messages.

Really now,  text messages?

I love to write and I do it a lot, and  I do enough to appreciate good writing (because God knows I try everyday to do it myself ) when I see it and I am here to tell you that text messages for the most part are lousy writing.

But that doesn’t stop people from arguing, having sex or debating  over matters of life and death while thumbing literary masterpieces like

AWGTHTGTTA Are We Going To Have To Go Through This Again

AWHFY Are We Having Fun Yet?

AWLTP Avoiding Work Like The Plague

BTD Bored To Death

BTDT Been There Done That

Today I forgot my phone- and instead of going back for it I was phoneless.

I must say it was liberating.

I didn’t have something on my desk humming, dinking, clicking or blasting out the theme to Doctor Who seemingly whenever the heck it felt like it.

I’d compare how I felt for the most part to the old days when ourkids got packed off to Grandpa and Grandma’s for the weekend.

And much like when we would walk in the door at the end of the visit, there was my phone packed with ( ergh ) texts, phone messages, notifications from Facebook and Pinterest all crying out to me for attention.

I was thinking to myself maybe I should leave it at home more often not take it with me and turn it off, but leave it on my bookshelf.

Only…only…today on my bus ride into work I was looking around and almost everyone around me was on their phone and oh heaven forbid you flip the pages of your book to loud because you could be interrupting a texting session or put someone in danger of not  crushing that candy or having their condo eaten by a monster.

So on today’s commute as I considered making my life phoneless I thought of aTwilight Zone story called The Obsolete Man

When I was a kid that story scared me, as an adult it doesn’t seem like such a scary impossible story. It seems very possible

And I have to admit, when I’m out with friends or at the symphony or shopping I’ll pull my phone out, you know so I’ll blend in.

So that I don’t become Obsolete or find myself separated from the heard.