Since I still don't have TV, I went to my local bar La Estrellita to watch the first half of the Thursday night NFL opener pitting the Saints and the Vikings. The bar wasn't very full, and I struck up a conversation with a young woman whose left hand never strayed far from her Blackberry. (Not pictured here, but she was young, blonde and attractive.)
When I told her I didn't own a cell phone, she looked at me with a mixture of shock and pity usually reserved for double amputees. Her cell was a vital part of her life. She compared her provider Verizon to a bad boyfriend. Her old contract was almost up, but she upgraded to her Blackberry and now there was still a year and a half left on the new contract. She pays over $200 a month. I asked her about the company that charges a flat $40 a month (turns out that's Metro PCS), but she said she travels a lot and the service wasn't reliable enough.
The thing she said I found the most striking was that if she didn't have a cell phone, she wouldn't know that she had friends. The texts she got and sent during the evening were the proof of her connection to the world.
It was another of those "Jeez, I'm old." moments that have been happening with increasing frequency over the past few years.
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