Illustration by Bob AulAm I the only person in Orange County who doesn't suffer from Cell Phone Dependency Disorder? Yesterday, on my way home from work, I was nearly sideswiped by some asshole cutting across four lanes of traffic with no direction signal on, no look back, no rearview-mirror glance, and guess what? He was on a fucking cell phone.
I'm not through yet. I got to the main intersection in my neighborhood, and there was a woman (on a cell phone) standing on a corner waiting to cross. She was punching the walk/don't walk button distractedly, staring at the red light. Next thing I knew—even though she still had a red—she stepped in front of my car. I stopped. Tires screeched behind me. BAM. I was hit in the rear. Guess what? It was some stupid son of a bitch on a cell phone. Fortunately, there was little damage, but I was shaken.
I decided to cool down with an iced Americano at Starbucks. (I know, I should have gone to some independent community coffeehouse, but fuck it—I was pissed and needed instant gratification.) The line was long, and guess what? Directly in front of me, some Farrah Fawcett-haired jogger-suit-wearing househen was talking on a GODDAMN cell phone. “And she's married,” she said into her little black box. “Can you imagine what kind of kids she has?”
Frankly, I didn't give a shit. When the selfish tart reached the counter, she was still talking on her GODDAMN phone. The clerk waited patiently for her order—God bless you, gentle spirit—but I knew that inside, he was melting down. Or at least that I would be.
Right then, right there I started my cell-phone defense strategy, and I haven't stopped since. Every time I see someone talking on a cell phone in a way that defies etiquette or common sense, I start making noise. I start talking to them, or singing loudly, or honking my horn. By the time I got to the second line of Bob Marley's “No Woman, No Cry,” that Farrah Fawcett fruit pie had hung up and placed her order.
When I got home, I found an ad in the mail from Auto Club Insurance. They wanted to give me a cell phone for free. Why? To make emergency calls for the emergency that was created because someone was talking on the goddamn cell phone? I called the Auto Club, told them about my accident and asked them about cell phones. They told me studies show that there's no conclusive proof that cell phones cause accidents. And guess what? One of those studies was conducted by the Auto Club itself. Is this nuts? Are they getting a cut of the long-distance action?
Hey, all you cell-phone junkies, there's a world out here filled with people to interact with—and not over some fucking walkie-talkie. Next time you get in my way, I've got my plan in place. In fact, I feel a lovely ballad coming on right now:
“I wanna be an anarchist/Get pissed/Destroy.”
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