Help needed to avoid being a jerk

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from March 9, 2005. Jack was a holdout on getting his first cell phone. Even after he got one, for years if you called it you could count on it buzzing away unanswered in his car’s glove compartment. And he never succumbed to the lure of Facebook. No doubt by being wary of these things he dodged dealing with those who can’t seem to avoid using the tools he was so consciously trying to avoid.

I now have all the tools I need to be a complete jerk.

Oh, I know. There are plenty of folks who believe I’ve had those tools for years. There are probably still others who don’t think I need any tools at all.

But I’ve got news for them: I now have a cell phone.

And in 21st century America, that’s the most important tool anyone can have when it comes to being insufferable, rude, or just plain irritating.

For years, I resisted the allure of the cute little digital handheld gizmos.

I liked being out-of-touch now and then, enjoying the windshield meditations of a drive to Dunkirk for instance. It didn’t bother me that I was cut off from the global network of chatterers. I reveled in it.

Back in 2000, when I was doing a journalism project in Georgia (the republic of, not the state of), I was handed a cell phone by the guy I was working for. He’d even programmed in some ditty from an opera as my ring tone.

For the next four weeks I continued to drive him nuts by leaving it turned off 90 percent of the time.

But, think about it, he was just about the only person I knew in the entire country. At least, he was one of a tiny handful who had the number of the cell phone I’d been assigned.

Since I saw him and the rest of the handful at least once a day at the office, the cell phone struck me as overkill.

A couple of years ago, we relented and got a cell phone for Sally. It’s apparently required by U.S. law when one reaches a certain point in the teen years.

She’s now on her second one, and my wife has her own tucked in her purse.

That just left me, odd man out and determined to stay that way. My Luddite streak was asserting itself, and all was right with my world.

Until the ice storm.

In short order, it turns out that cell phones are vitally important to getting a newspaper produced during adverse conditions.

By the time things had reverted back to normal — that is, another lousy Indiana winter — I’d relented and agreed to join the late 20th century before the 21st got too far along.

And so I have it.

It’s cute. It can do more things than I can figure out. It fits into a neat holder that attaches to my belt.

And it’s actually proved useful.

At least when I remember to turn the darned thing on.

But if you ever see me yakking on it in a public place, talking loudly in an airport or as I walk down the street, do me a favor. Remind me not to be a jerk.