If You Have Time To Pee, You Have Time To Call Me Back

• TUESDAY: Billy’s iPhone rings to the tune of ‘Move Bitch Get Out The Way.’

• Billy looks down at his phone: “Call from Cindy.”

• Billy looks up from his phone and turns back to his computer to watch Charlie biting his brother’s finger on YouTube.

• FRIDAY: Billy is sitting at his computer, chatting on AIM.

• Cindy IMs Billy.

• Cindy says, “Billy, why didn’t you ever call me back.”

• Billy responds, “Oh, I was busy that day, I’m sorry.”

Life is a paradox. The amount of tactics we use to communicate has practically exponentially increased in the last 30 years, yet, in my opinion, we live in an increasingly lonely society.


Remember when we didn’t have cell phones (I know right, how did we even live) and relied on landlines? My heart jumped a little in middle and high school when I had my first few boyfriends, wondering if that incessant ringing was them at the other end waiting to tell me how cutesies I looked today. But sometimes we weren’t home, we were out being dragged along to Home Depot with our parents as they shopped for new ceiling fans and sinks. And here’s the glorious thing about missing calls when we relied on landlines: WE ALWAYS SEEMED TO CALL PEOPLE BACK. How many times did you hear this on your landline hanging off the kitchen wall three weeks later: “Hey Marcy, sorry I never called you back, I was busy.” Never, right? It’s because we always called each other back.


I think they should take the “phone” out of “cell phone” and just call it a “cell,” because the term “phone” has lost all meaning these days. I’d be willing to bet that “calling someone” is the least utilized purpose of all the purposes of cell phones these days.


And quite frankly, I DON’T get it. Even though we are so much more “advanced” now than we were in the 80s, it’s almost like we’ve retrogressed; we get phone calls now and we don’t know what it means. Generally, when someone calls you, it’s because he/she want to talk to you. It’s not just so you can listen to the ringtone that you threw a dollar bill down the toilet for. It’s because SHE WANTS TO TALK. Such a simple concept has seemed to get far too complicated these days.


Remember when we sent letters to people who lived on the other side of the country? Now we send letters to people who live eight feet away from us in 160 characters.


My twin sister lives in the room across the hall from me. It was our birthday yesterday. I went to sleep before midnight the night before, but woke up a little after. I heard her talking on the phone, so when I heard that she was still awake, I sent her a happy birthday (poopy) text message. Of course I did that for funzies, but my birthday humor is the living purpose of this post. Wouldn’t you rather get a face-to-face visitor on your birthday than a text message? Especially from those people who live within convenient traveling distances?


Life is a paradox, and I am exhibit A. I think I’ll go tweet about it.


Charlie bit me.