Smart phone, dumb phone

The other day my so-called smart phone pocket-dialed my wife, Carissa, while I was standing at the men’s room urinal at work. Thanks for letting me listen to you pee, she texted me later (with what I assume was sarcasm, although I try not to judge people for their kinks). In fact my so-called smart phone frequently calls my “contacts” without my permission. This week my brother Clay started shouting Hello? . . . What do you want? . . . Hello? . . . What are you doing? from the front pocket of my pants. For the record, I was walking down the street and not preforming a biological function of any sort. 

I’ve mostly forgiven my phone for its occasional unauthorized dialing sprees. I’ve selected for my phone’s voice option the one that sounds like Scarlett Johansson and she calls me Big Money when I talk to her. So we’re cool. Smart phone Scarlett not only sounds great, but she knows a lot of stuff.

Me: Scarlett, where’s the nearest liquor store?

Scarlett: Hello, Big Money. Here are a few places that I have found.

Me: Thank you, Scarlett.

Scarlett: No, thank you Big Money.

Me: [blushing]

To be honest, though, Scarlett pretty much sucks when it comes to functioning as a telephone. It’s not just the pocket-dialing incidents. Talking and listening on a smart phone is awkward. Old-fashioned not smart phones had something of a curved, banana shape with a cup-like apparatus at one end for listening and the other for talking. The dumb phones comported perfectly with how our heads are shaped. Scarlett is a sleek and elegant rectangle of glass and hard plastic not quite long enough to simultaneously reach both my ear and my mouth. It’s not even obvious where sound goes in and sound comes out. Also, if you’re like me and you have a cheekbone, you and your smart phone are going to inadvertently hang up on a call or two.

Yes, I am aware there are work-arounds to Scarlett’s deficiencies as a telephonic device. None are acceptable. Bluetooth technology, for example, is fancy and all, but I’ve had too many middle-aged men boarding aircraft and standing in Starbucks lines tell me they love me and then I notice the ear-mounted Secret Service-type gadget and realize I had been included in someone else’s intimate moment. But sometimes not before telling a stranger that while I like him, I'm not ready to go farther than that.

Our transition to smart phones presents another issue, although this one isn’t directly Scarlett’s fault. Regardless, we are less than a generation away from not knowing anyone’s phone number. Why bother to remember a number when you can simply push a button (which on my smart phone is helpfully displayed in the shape of a simple old-fashioned non-smart phone receiver) and Scarlett does the dialing? Well, here’s one reason. What if you lose your phone and you need to call someone to give you a ride? Here’s a more likely reason for some of you: What if the cops throws you in jail without your phone and when you’re allowed to make one call the only number you know is your mom’s and that’s the last freaking person you want to call from jail. No thanks, officer. I’ll just stay here until somebody at work notices I haven’t shown up for a week or two and sends out a search party. Or maybe that’s just me. The only phone number I still remember is the one from my childhood home in Priest River, Idaho. So if you are at 208-448-1983, please don’t hang up if you get a jailhouse call from a stranger.

Scarlett is beautiful and flawed. So are we all in our own special ways. But most of us don’t primarily claim to be a telephone and then suck at being a telephone.