Where is the button on my cell phone to tell it
it doesn’t control me?
 
I remember the early adapters who got pagers and quickly learned that they had cut off their escape. At work their bosses could find them whenever they wanted. Leaving your pager at your desk was not an option. Being given a pager was a badge signifying importance that quickly became a shackle of servitude.

A cellphone is supposed to be more than a pager, a means to reach everybody else. It makes me feel like a television with the remote being bandied about who knows where. And too often it’s the remote itself calling in.

I appreciate the many features of my modern cell phone, it is indeed the most unimaginably versatile little gadget I have ever had. But I need it to do more. My phone can take pictures, record memos, and wake me up, along with every conceivable permutation of telephony, except excuse itself. It’s like a randy butler and I have to excuse it. In public, I have to make sure it will not ring inappropriately. In private I have to bear its interruptions when a better class of valet would know when to withdraw.

How should I know ahead of time when I would prefer not to be reminded of missed calls, or awaiting messages, or a waning battery? Certainly these are important matters, but in the quiet of my affairs I don’t need a needy pip-squeak chiming with regular monotony every two minutes.

Maybe the answer is in the manual. Believe me, the last thing I want is to have to learn how to better understand my new high maintenance [uninvited] best bud.