-When I went to London on a family vacation over five years ago, I was amazed at how technologically advanced the British were.  Everyone was walking around with cell phones and almost no one I knew back in the States had one.  I scoffed at the extravagance.  I thought to myself, why would I ever need a cell phone?  Now, I don’t even go to the bathroom without taking my cell (more on that later).  The only thing is, I think that having a cell phone has slowly become more trouble than it’s worth…

-Let’s face it, a cell phone’s primary function is as a phone book.  I have everyone’s number in there.  Of course, I dial by choosing a name out of my phone’s address book and when the phone rings, a name pops up, not a number.  As a result, I have no fucking clue what anyone’s number is.  So when I don’t have my phone on me, I can’t call my roommate or even my sister.

-And now that I have literally hundreds of numbers in my phone, I don’t even pick it up anymore when someone calls and their name doesn’t pop up.  I think, “Oh my God, who is this?  They’ve never called before.  This can’t be good.”

-A lot of laws are being passed around the country prohibiting driving while talking on your cell phone.  And I think that’s good start, but we really need to extend the ban elsewhere.  For instance, the other day I saw a woman in a motorized wheelchair crash into a bus stop because she was talking on her phone.  And how about those fucking people you see in the street who clearly can’t talk on their cell phone and walk at the same time?  They walk really slow, then speed up, then slow again, they’re swerving and shit, they walk across red lights.  They are physically unable to walk and talk.

-1-800 Collect commercials have been all over the place lately.  I have a question for you – have you ever called collect in your entire life?  I think I did maybe once when I was ten years old and stuck at the mall.  What about pay phones?  When was the last time you used one of those?  Do you ever find yourself walking past someone using a pay phone and thinking, hmm, I wonder what happened to her cell phone?

-The most notorious cell phone talkers I have ever seen are New York City cab drivers.  These guys are on their cell phones literally all day.  They’ll be chatting away your entire ride.  What could they possibly be talking about?  They’re definitely not discussing the fastest and cheapest way to get to your destination, I can tell you that much.

-Has this ever happened to you?  You’re on the phone and a bunch of people are around.  You are talking to someone and start to get off the phone but then realize you had to ask one more question, but by the time you finish your question the other person has already hung up.  Do you ever act like the person is still on the other line (“Oh….um…OK, no problem, bye.”) so that you don’t look like an idiot in front of your friends?

-Ever call one of your friends at work and on his answering machine message your friend is talking in such a low voice you can barely hear him?  What are you afraid to set up your voicemail at work?  Speak up!

-One of my buddies who I went to college with at Penn now goes to Penn Law School.  His new phone number is one number off from the hoagie place that we always used to call for delivery at school.  I cannot physically call my friend now.  My fingers are ingrained with the hoagie number.  I think we’ll just have to set up some system where they can transfer me over.

-I’m that guy who has that phone that calls people by mistake when it’s sitting in my pocket.  Poor Amy and Zach.  As the first and last names in my phone book, about once a month they get a phone call from my pocket that’s about twenty minutes of nothing.  Of course, since my first name is Aaron, I’m almost always the first name in my friends’ phone books.  I get accidental calls about twice a week.  Thankfully my phone usually just picks up when in it’s my pocket anyway.

-Something must be done about cell phone plans.  Could anything be more complicated?  Seriously, you need an advanced degree to figure one of these fuckers out.  I love the offers they make on TV – “Now available, 3,000 weekend minutes!”  3,000 minutes?  You know how many minutes that is?  Who the fuck can use that many minutes on the weekend?  You’d have to be a cab driver or something.  How about this – on my plan right now, I have “anytime” minutes… that I can only use during the week.  What??

-I think cell phone customer service is literally run by the Devil.  Could there be any more helpless, rude, annoying, or stupid people in the world?  When my last cell phone company offered a new plan that was better and cheaper than the one I had at the time, I actually refused to call up to get the better deal just because it would mean talking to one of these jerks.

-I hate trying to manage my cell phone use so I don’t go over my plan.  You’re talking, you’re talking, and then when it gets to 0:59, you’re like, “OK gotta go bye” and you hang up on your mom so you don’t waste that extra minute.  There’s nothing worse than a 1:01 call.  Then you always have idiots like my one friend, Chi, who on the first day of the month passed out with his cell phone on for like twelve hours and used up all his minutes in one night.

-The problem with having your cell with you at all times is that you end up making calls for no reason.  You’re like, well, I have three minutes to kill, might as well get on the horn!  Then you get your ridiculous cell phone bill and you’re like, who the hell are all these people and why did I call them?

-I use my cell phone so much that I don’t even have a regular phone in my apartment.  So I have a cell phone and web-based email that I can check from anywhere – I’m completely virtual.  Only thing is, when I come home after a long day, I have no emails or messages waiting for me.  It’s kind of anti-climactic.

-The fact that I only have a cell phone gets me in all sorts of mishaps.  Last week I left my cell phone in my cousin’s car in Long Island.  I didn’t realize it until I had gotten back to my apartment in the city.  But my roommate wasn’t home so I had literally no phone to call anyone with.  I was taken back to the olden days when there were no phones, because I had no way of communicating with anyone.  I tried to make some smoke signals or something from my window but that wasn’t going to work.  Finally I realized that I have instant messenger on my computer.  There was only one person on my buddy list online at the time, my friend in San Francisco.  So IM’d him to call my parents who then emailed me to tell me that my friend was going to pick up my phone from my cousin and drive it into the city the next day where I could get it.  Pretty convenient, huh?

-When I finally got my phone back I took it into the bathroom with me to catch up on all the calls I missed while I took care of business.  When I went to leave the bathroom, I dropped my phone in the toilet and fried it.  Now I’m waiting for the company to send me my eighth replacement phone (no joke) in as many months.  So if you need to call me in the next week, just send a smoke signal instead.

-Do you have friends that don’t check their voicemail?  This completely baffles me.  I call my friend and leave an urgent message on her cell.  She never calls me back.  I see her a week later and ask her what happened.  She says, “Oh, I never check my voicemail.”  Are you fucking kidding me?

-In this era of cell phones, isn’t using regular phones just weird?  I always try to hit “Send.”  What about leaving messages on a regular answering machine and not digital voicemail?  It’s like a black hole.  Don’t you just get that feeling like they’re not going to get your message for like two weeks?

-The worst is when you are about to leave a message but then realize that you didn’t hear the beep.  You always have to start the message like, “Um, I don’t know if you are going to get this but…”

-What about the obligatory cell phone number exchange?  You meet someone you haven’t seen for a while in the street and they ask you for your cell phone number.  So of course you have to ask them for their cell phone number even though you have no intention of calling.  Sometimes I’m just playing Snake on my phone when I’m pretending to enter in their number.

-Something weird keeps happening to me.  I’ll get a phone call and the person calling will ask for Bob or something.  So I’ll be like, “Sorry, you have the wrong number, what number were you trying to reach?”  And they’ll tell me my phone number!  I never know what to do so I’m like, “Um…can I take a message?”

-What about when you’re with a bunch of your friends and someone calls you and when you tell them where you are, they tell you to “say what’s up” to everyone.  You have to be all awkward like, “Hey guys, Dave says what’s up,” but no one ever gives a shit.

-Here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-When you’re waiting for a cab for what seems like forever and every one that goes by is taken, don’t you start looking at the cabs like limos?  A cab goes by with someone in the back and you’re like, “Wow, how did he swing that?  He must be somebody!”

-I am completely cut off right now from my parents, they don’t give me a cent.  It’s funny though, because now that I’m on my own, and it’s my own money, I spend a lot more freely than I did when it was my parent’s money.  I guess before I felt kind of bad if I dropped a hundred bucks of my mom’s money at the bar.  Now I’m like, fuck it, I earned it!  Of course, I’m broke now.

-Why are magazines pages numbered so poorly?  First, I can never find the table of contents because it’s buried after fifteen pages of ads.  Then, the magazine only has like four page numbers: 23, 68, 89, 101, and then the back cover.  How the fuck am I supposed to find anything?

-I know this is completely random but this is what us Wharton grads think about.  I think that Brita should make bottled water.  If you think about it, Brita really isn’t selling water filters and taps, its selling peace of mind that you are drinking pure, clean water.  Bottled water gives you that same peace of mind.  And since other bottled water companies, like Evian and Perrier, are already cutting into Brita’s filter business, it would make sense for Brita to do it as well, even though technically it would be cannibalistic.  So that’s why I think Brita should make bottled water.  Thank you.

-Ever go to try something on in a store but the clothes have these huge anti-theft tags on the inside?  You have look in the mirror like, well, if there wasn’t this two-inch bulge on the side, I guess this would fit!

-Ever notice that every radio station goes to commercial at the same time?

-Ever listen to the radio and you hear this great new song and it’s two minutes before you realize it’s a Sprite commercial?

-I hate it when my friends make me wait for them so that we can leave together.  Then we walk down a flight of stairs together and then go in opposite directions.  What the hell was the point of that?

-My name is Aaron Karo, but most people just call me Karo.  Sometimes people get confused and think that Karo is my first name.  They’ll ask, “So… “Karo,” what kind of name is that?”  And I’ll be like, “Last.”

-When you’re walking down the street and see someone up ahead giving out flyers, you think how annoying those people are.  Like I need another flyer for a barber or strip club.  But when you walk past the person and they don’t try to give you a flyer, don’t you get kind of insulted?  What, I’m not good enough for your strip club?

-Is it immature of me that I still snicker at people named Dick?

-Ever notice that any party that you get an Evite for sucks?  And what do you do when you get it?  You go right to the section where it tells you who said “No.”

-And, finally, here is a true tale of “cellular woe.”  I met this chick, let’s call her Lisa.  I wanted to take Lisa out on a date one night so I gave her a call during the day.  She was down and we made plans to go out that night and I was supposed to call her at 8pm.  8 o’clock rolls around and I give Lisa a call.  Her voicemail picks up right away.  I tell her to give me a call back.  She doesn’t.  8:15 rolls around, I give her a call, there’s no answer, so I hang up.  8:45 comes and I’m fuming, thinking I’ve been stood up.  I give her another call, again the voicemail picks up, and I leave a somewhat pissed off message.  I never fucking hear from the girl.  She stood me up.  She never calls.  Not the next day or the day after that.  About a week later I get a call from a friend of mine who lives in California.  I’m chatting with her and then she says, “Oh yeah, last week you left these two strange messages on my phone about getting together, what the heck were you talking about?”  Then I realize it.  Her name is Lisa, too.  I have two Lisa’s in my cell phone.  When I left those messages that night, I didn’t realize I was leaving them for the wrong Lisa.  I never actually called the girl I wanted to take out.  She thinks I stood her up!  Fuck me.

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