With the exploding popularity of people needing to be "reachable" 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the cell phone has become a normal, if not irritating part of the social landscape.  First of all, it never ceases to amaze me that millions of consumers have been lulled into the hyper-consumerism version of keeping-up-with-the-techno-Joneses.  It is my belief that the widespread adoption of cell phone technology is an indicator of how hundreds of millions of people can be tricked into accepting low-standard technology.  Cell phone service providers actually sell consumers their service by bragging about low failure rates (i.e. dropped calls).  We've all come to expect to have hundreds of dropped calls a year when using cell phones—AND WE ACCEPT IT.  Next time you need brain surgery, be sure to find the surgeon who advertises "Fewest Botched Brain Jobs."   It should be a comfort.

Lately, the Blue Tooth Headset has made itself quite prevalent to me. Everywhere I look, about one in 30 people is talking on one while strolling through a public place. Many would infer that such people are utterly more important, a step higher in the hierarchy than the rest of the population who comprise the great unwashed.   

With the advent of this new technology it has become confusing when trying to determine whether a person is using a Blue Tooth headset or whether s/he has Tourette's Syndrome [a disorder characterized by the presence of multiple physical (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic].  Upon initial observation, the physical signs are indistinguishable.   

It has become increasingly irritating to me, because before the cell phone was invented, there were many important people who actually had to be reachable at the drop of a hat.  What did they do back then?  They carried around pagers and had huge, unwieldy phone sets installed in their luxury cars.  These were accoutrements that only the rich and "important" people—the beautiful people—could afford.  

Nowadays, thanks to the self-esteem movement of the 80s, everyone is important.  I teach at a college, and one of my students, a 20-something young lady, wears one of these contraptions on her ear throughout the class session.  Being somewhat of a luddite (oh, yes, I have a cell phone), I'm not sure what important call she could be waiting for.  Maybe it is important that she receive a call from her boyfriend who needs an immediate connection to clarify how to separate the colors from the whites while he's at the laundromat.

In any case, remember that there are still legitimate Tourette's cases walking around in public.  In fact, I experience a little joy when I encounter someone on the street screaming "No! No! Jesus! Cold water! Those are my underwear!  Don't turn 'em pink!" and notice that she's not wearing a Blue Tooth headset.

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