Man Is Born Free...

...but everywhere he is on the phone.

To Cingular after the screen on my cellphone went blank. I spent the weekend on the road with only the landline at my mate's house to keep me in touch. The missus was not pleased.

I arrive expecting to breeze in to the back of the shop where they have a company junkman who tends all the discarded and broken-down gadgets. Many a time, he's produced from his heap a replacement back or front for a phone.

Not anymore. The junkman is gone. Now you are greeted at the door by a customer service rep whose function seems to be sussing out your complaint or scam. The place was packed with a motley crew of folk, waiting for their turn to take on sales rep. All around the room you could hear the murmurs of pleading, wheedling and jiving. "I'm already on overdraft at the bank. You gots to give me more time. I need this phone." or "I told her to keep her minutes down but that girl she can talk!"

I noticed that the people waiting, almost all black, were either talking on their phone or fondling it, as if it were some strange, magical oracle who would reveal all at any moment. I find my students doing the same thing. More than once, I've caught students text messaging in class, second only in audacity to instant messaging on a laptop while I'm preaching the gospel of Joyce Carol Oates and her gothic take on Amercian womanhood.

In his book, Speaking Into the Air, John D. Peters suggests that we should never assume, no matter how advanced and how prevalent the technology, that our message is going to get through to our intended receiver. We have faith "you can hear me now" but it is sorely tested at many different levels, not the least of which involves the Almighty and the dead. Yet we are more and more obsessed with making some sort, any sort of connection, if only with a gizmo that has plenty of expensive add-on features to kill the time or the distance. The phone companies know this and price accordingly.

If the FCC hadn't allowed for so many rapacious fees and tariffs, having a landline in the crazy age of the cell would be a dream come true. Can you hear me now? No? Good.