I have been hammering the same nail for years, but now I give up. I thought we had grown a brain about cellphones and driving, but we haven’t.
House Bill 1094, which would have required hands-free devices while driving, got ixnayed. Instead motorists will not be allowed to text message. I am sure the cops will love to have to make that distinction during stops, arrests, and deadly accidents.
Most of us are lousy drivers to begin with, with hands at 10 and 2, no radio, no sodas, no cellphones. I made a five-minute trip to the post office the other day and witnessed three drivers commit four major driving infractions.
My inclination is to stay home and board up the windows. I don’t have a cellphone. Don’t want one and don’t need one. I think they are an affectation of monkey see, monkey do. I am sure that there are times when a cellphone is the best possible way to make a connection with someone else, especially in emergencies.
A friend of mine, Denver artist Peter Illig, painted a picture of two people in a boat in the middle of a beautiful lake, with a back-drop of beautiful trees, on a beautiful day. No one else is around. One of the boaters is on the phone.
I don’t get it. Why do you need to make a call in an art museum or a class room? Or take a call in a theatre during a live performance? It has to be either life and death or a complete disregard for civility and other people.
I have to drive for myself and drive for the guy on the phone in front of me. He is driving under the speed limit, and veering a little, and slowing down and speeding up. He changes lanes without signaling. If I had a dollar for every time this has happened to me I could buy a velocipede.
Studies have shown that a motorist on a cellphone is the equivalent of a drunk driver. Throw a little Jack into him and we have double jeopardy.
Since I don’t have a cellphone my vote probably doesn’t count. I’ve actually been mocked because I don’t have one.
When Representative Claire Levy, D-Boulder, put 1094 forward I said, “Now you’re talking.” I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get it passed because we want what we want, I want my MTV, and I want my cellphone.
Cellphones are addictive. There is a phobia, nomophobia, which is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. I wonder if Hideo Nomo minds. I have a fear of being in mobile phone contact. I have never made a cellphone call or sent a text message and I feel fine.
The cool factor is in this too. It be cool to be on the phone. A lot of kids don’t even remember a time without them. So it has to be unquestionably OK to call (and call and call, anywhere at anytime).
The Zen thought to “be here now” is gone, daddy, gone, because no one is here now. We are here and there simultaneously. A special occasion dinner is no longer a special occasion when a call is made to your next door neighbor about tee times.
There are those who live in a much more kinetic world than I do, who truly need to be in constant contact with associates and agents and other important people, even globally. But, gee, how important is the call in produce at Safeway when it’s about snap peas? And why are you so loud?
In “The Bank Dick” (I’m not kidding) W.C. Fields says, “If you talked any louder you wouldn’t need a phone.”
I don’t get it. But I don’t get guns either. Or tattoos. Or Black Friday, or half the names of stuff they serve at Starbucks. I want to marry a lighthouse keeper and keep her company.
If your cellphone doesn’t ring it’s not me.
Craig Marshall Smith (craigmarshallsmith@comcast.net) is a retired emeritus professor of art and an abstract expressionist painter and lives in Highlands Ranch. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
