Thursday's Writing Essential February 7, 2013 Cell Phones

Last week's Thursday's Challenges began with  "Thursday's Challenges have been pretty serious for awhile but for more than 1 reason I continued the serious challenges for another week. This week the Thursday Challenge is simply meant to be fun with no real substance. It is meant to be like cotton candy fun and a lot of fluff.

Your challenge for Thursday February 7, 2013 is to create a post about cell phones.

I am older than many of my fellow Gather Writing Essential members way older. At the school where I teach at I have been accused of being older than dirt. My response is that I am not older than dirt, I am much older. I am old enough to remember a time before cell phones. I even remember a time in business when if you were in your office when the telephone rang you did not always answer it so that your clients would think you were really busy.

I will never forget my introduction to the down side of cell phones. It was some months before I would actually own my first one. I was a grad student at a small college in Central Washington State. I had been eating my way through a mountain of pizza at a pizza buffet at a local pizza restaurant and had to use the restroom. I no sooner stepped in to the restroom when from one of the stalls  I heard, "Hello." I returned the greeting. I then heard, "Man this quarter has been so tough. The only thing that has kept me from losing it is that my fraternity has a bunch of old tests and notes that I have been pouring over. So how are things for you?" I said, "I am starting to get really nervous. I am 5 weeks behind on my thesis but my assistantship is so cool." I then heard, "I gotta call you back. Some idiot is listening to our conversation and thinks that I am talking to him. It took me a second or two to realize that he was talking about me................wait a minute this person was sitting on a toilet talking on a phone about a topic that could have been talked about at any other time and I was the idiot?

It has been 14 years since my encounter with the cell phone of the worst kind and I have yet to use a cell phone while even in a restroom yet alone  near a comode. If I live 35 more years I can be reasonably certain that I am not likely to ever use it in that chamber of privacy.

This experience did not keep me from owning a cell phone or several for that matter. In the years that I have owned cell phones I have been grateful for opportunities created because of having them,  have appreciated the help given because of them and so appreciate the fact that they have made my life safer but there have been other times that I have been anything but happy with cell phones. I have now and believe that I always will have a love hate relationship with cell phones.

I called my daughter the other day who lives along way from me using a cell phone and I heard her say, "I love you." It just doesn't get any better than that. Yesterday I was behind a car that was weaving from side to side and I thought that the driver must be on the cell phone, of course they could also have been drunk but I didn't think of that. Worst than the driver talking on the cell phone they were texting. It is against the law to text while driving but that fact hasn't sunk in to too many just yet.It made me long for the days before cell phones were invented.

Although this is an open challenge there are still a few guidelines that we need to follow. They are the usual one that we ask you to follow each Thursday.One guideline to remember is to include the words Cell Phones 2/7/2013 somewhere in the title.

Another guideline is to be sure to tag it with Thurs or Thursday Writing Essentials, Thursday Gather Writing Essential, Cell Phones Don't forget to Post your post  to Gather Writing Essential.

Another guideline is to not forget that there is a limit of three submissions from each member per day. If you’re extremely prolific, spread out your work and post only three submissions per day.

One last guideline is to please remember not to submit any response until Thursday actually happens (No earlier than 12:01 AM).

** Again  I still have not reached a point  where my plate is clear enough to be able to post a list of the responses to Thursday's Challenge. It is still my intent to to finally do that ASAP but it won't be this week either. I am very sorry.

***Any post submitted after Thursday will be accepted throughout the week as usual.

As a writer and author waiting for anything is a sort of adventure. Everywhere I look are stories that need to be told. Waiting has now taken on a totally new dimension. I will admit I am not now nor ever will be fond of waiting to talk to my principal no matter how much I evolve as a writer.

I would write more but my cell phone is ringing and it might be an important call.................or it might not be.