Here’s an original topic for you: Idiot cell phone users. My issue at the moment is incredulity that we’re a good twenty-five years out from the inception of cell phones, and people are still using them to annoy the living bejesus out of everybody else. Twenty-five years later, and people are also still using cell phones to get dead (usually from car wrecks, not annoyance).

Of course you know the tried and true complaints: The idiot who’s cussing at his secretary while in line at the DMV, the fool who’s talking to her boyfriend and merges into you on the freeway, the guy in the who wont talk to the checker at the supermarket because he’s arguing with his girlfriend about their trip this weekend.

Actually, when I got my first cell phone, I did a pretty stupid thing with it. I was in line at Jamba Juice, and had just paid and was supposed to move out of the way, but my phone rang, so I stood there at the front of the line on my phone until somebody bashed my head in and left me for dead in a dumpster; something I richly deserved for being such an idiot.

Nowadays there’s a new complaint I’ve got: bluetooth headsets. For those of you in places like Texas where they still use cups on string or just loud hollering, a bluetooth headset is this sort of earpiece / mic thing that clips to your ear for you to talk into and listen to rather than talking into and listening to one’s cell phone, all the while, one’s phone sits in one’s pocket. The result is that you’ve got people walking around while appearing to be talking into thin air. That’s right, people can buy a device for their phones that makes them look just like a crazy person!

My phone is a weird Nokia thing with a miserable little camera and a bunch of little bumpers on the sides that light up when the phone rings. It’s a 15-year-old girl phone, but I am mostly satisfied with the features.

Sometimes people leave messages for me, but I’m not prepared to actually talk to anybody, so I erase the message without listening to the whole thing, then don’t call the person back because I feel guilty.

Still, it’s good to be able to get a hold of anybody from anywhere. Good communication is a key ingredient in any good relationship.

Thing is, for a long time, my sister and my brother in law were NOT part of this. They’re a little weird anyway; for instance, back when they owned phones, neither of them ever actually had their phone with them. Renee would always have Christopher’s and the other way around. If they had a phone at all. More often than not, the phones would be lost in the car or in the couch or something. Until finally the phones broke, and they just never got ‘em replaced. Christopher said that he didn’t believe in cell phones any more, but he sure paid a lot for somebody who didn’t believe in cell phones. He’s actually still paying on the contract. At least he downgraded to the $10 a month plan. Finally.

I’ve decided that the moral of this story is that if anybody has ever cursed you because of your phone usage, you need to re-think the way you use it.