Cell phones are the devil. There I’ve said it.

I know a lot of you have been scared to even utter the words under your breath because then the T-moVer-Cing-Sprintall-Tell mafia would be after you.

But I am not afraid of them. After all what are they going to do? Stop accepting my payments?

Plus, I’ve made pretty good friends with all the area policemen and sheriff deputies so I dare your people to try to lay a hand on me Mr. Cell phone Mafia leader.

I think it’s all some kind of conspiracy to take over the world by total brain domination.

I mean really, what other small electronic device do you have has the kind of mind control like a cellular phone?

If you leave your house without it, you’re crazy. If you lose your signal, you will try your hardest to find “the spot.” If your battery dies and you don’t have a charger – YOU almost die.

And, God forbid, someone asks you to borrow your phone. Because depending on what time of day it is, your blood pressure will shoot through the roof, you’d begin to growl and finally you’d shout, “Do you realize it’s daytime on a Thursday? Do you think minutes grow on trees, or have you seen a minute fairy that goes around throwing them at people?”

If it’s a weekend, they might have a better chance of using it, but you still stand there watching them like a hawk, counting the minutes they are using to hold a pointless conversation. Who cares if his wife’s in labor? He should hurry to the hospital instead asking all those other pointless questions like, “how far apart are the contractions?” and “is my wife O.K.?”

After all, you have minutes that could be used for something more important – like asking your friends about plans for the night and figuring out what movie to rent.

Honestly speaking, those things do have some kind of control over most people – including myself.

For instance, I was at home in Connecticut one Christmas break – that means it was cold-and my cell phone provider did not have a signal in my house. Something about the alarm signal interfering with my signal. Anyway, whenever my phone rang – I would grab my jacket to head outside on my front porch.

Couldn’t stay inside because there’s no signal there, couldn’t talk on the landline because I didn’t want to pay long distance. Therefore I risked pneumonia just to hold a free phone conversation using my unlimited friend-to-friend minutes. Crazy huh?

Sometimes, when I’m driving, I wonder what did people do before cell phones. If their car broke down, how did they ever get in touch with anyone? If they got lost, where did directions come from?

Yea, I know there are gas stations for that. But sometimes gas stations are the last place you want to stop as a woman traveling by yourself down a dark Highway 80 toward Auburn. Or, if you are driving to Tuscaloosa on 43 and there are no gas stations.

Exactly. But I’ve been there, done that, and my cell phone always saved me – unless the little voice in the phone just made me think it did.