Cell Phones

There are a few things I would like to say about cell phones...


My sister seems to hate text messaging. She says why text now when you can talk later? I prefer to talk, but in my defense, she told me that over gmail chat, so I had to argue. I text a lot more now than I did before my dad got me unlimited. I was so impatient to get unlimited, but now that I have it, I wish I didn't. My friends are no longer afraid to text me, because I can't yell at them, saying every text they send is a dime out of my parents' income to spend on the cell phone bill. Now they text me a lot. Well, not a lot, but more often than before. I don't mind it so much, because I can hold a conversation after my parents go to bed and I would be uncomfortable making noise. It's kind of cool when my phone rings and I get to think "someone just sent me a message." I still prefer phone calls. You can get the tone of voice over a phone call, but not over texts. I like looking at the phone before I answer it and think, "someone cares about me enough to make a call rather than sending a quick, impersonal message under 160 characters that doesn't always need a reply. Someone wants to talk to me." I like that. I was never fond of talking on the phone until I got one friend that would chatter my butt off on facebook chat, but phone calls were nonexistant. Literally. This person didn't even have my phone number (but does now...). I decided that, among other reasons (it seemed to be taking up all my spare time), I would get off facebook for Lent. Six weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter I would require phone calls. (Note: on Ash Wednesday, my text messages still cost $.10 each) The phone calls didn't increase one bit. I just talked to that person less. Which made me sad. This person was very fun to talk to, among other things. About a week into Lent, my dad got unlimited texting for my phone. My no-facebook thing wasn't working. Because this person had my phone number, and could now text me for free. Now the impersonal messaging of facebook was transferred to my cell phone, and I never got a chance to talk to that person on the phone. Sure, we talk once in a while. I make all the phone calls. This person never calls me. After I got unlimited texting, I was tempted to get back on facebook, because what was the point of not being on it if I'm getting the impersonal messages somewhere else? May as well have bigger conversations, with more than 160 characters per message. But I had made that promise, so no facebook for me until Easter.

I like texting. It makes me feel important. I can hide it, if I need to, and it's quiet, if I can't talk. But if I'm sitting at home doing nothing, or in any other position in which I could take a phone call, I would prefer that to a text that says, "hey, what are you up to?" Either way, I prefer seeing people in real person over anything else in the world. I wish I got to see some people more than once a week, but if texting is the only way they will communicate with me on the days that I don't get to see them, well, I guess I'll just have to put up with it.