News Flash! Grumpy Old Man Disapproves Of Kids Today

MSN Today had a highlighted article: "Five Valid Reasons to Stop Using Cell Phones." It's a summary of another article written by a guy who refuses to use a cell phone. I'll save you the trouble of clicking through and summarize them for you. Because I'm just that selfless.

1. Shut Up And Drive. All you kids drag racing through town and talking on your cell phones--somebody is going to get hurt, you punks. Those damn kids today, with their technology can't pay attention to the road! Back in my day, all we had was hollering back at the radio, while lighting our cigarettes and tossing the butts out the window. And that was much safer!

2. You Get Distracted. Back in my old Econ 101 class, we called this "opportunity costs," and so that's what I'm calling it. But what really frosts my cookies is that back in the Good Old Days, only doctors needed to be on call, and they only needed pagers. Damn kids like you, who ought to be in knee britches anyway, who needs to call you? And if you want to talk to each other--what's wrong with two tin cans and some string? It was good enough for my generation; it's good enough for yours.

3. Cell phone accessories are expensive. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about here, but you shouldn't be spending money on wrist straps and text messaging and internet access, and I don't know what all. Why don't you save that money instead and buy a war bond? Do some good for a change, you uppity whipper-snappers.

4. Nobody needs to call you. We did just fine, back when all we had were land lines, and we had to pick up the earpiece and joggle the handle until Ernestine could connect our call. If somebody called us and we weren't there, they just had to call back until we were there. And if they got frustrated and never called us back, we didn't know about it and we did just fine.

So you think this is a lot like number 2 up there, do you? Well, that's all right, because what do you damn kids have to talk about anyway? Didn't you just see each other all day in school? And don't sass your elders.

5. Five? Did I say five? There isn't a number five. Why do there have to be five? Because that's the title of the piece? Dammit, then, there's all that talk on them webby net things about brain cancer. Or maybe it will give you hairy ears. Or make your eyes go bad. Something like that. That might be true, and anyway, we never got hairy ears from our tin cans.

So get rid of those damn phone thingies, and get off my lawn!


Yeah--guess I'll leave my cell phone at home when I go take the buggy out, mister. Because there are no opportunity costs to missing business calls if you are away from your office, are there? Or if you don't work in an office. There is no value as a parent of having a way for your children to reach you if they need you or a way to reach your kids either. Apparently it didn't occur to you that anybody might Or have a cell phone INSTEAD of a land line.

I swear, this guy has got to be like 206 years old.