Lost

Has anyone tried to find a pay phone in an airport recently?

I have the answer from personal experience—don’t bother.

Zip. Zero. Nada.

You can find empty shells—lonely booths, once containing phones, dinosaurs of another era.

At times you’ll find folks using the cubicle seats to relax but more often than not the cloistered confines provide a bit of privacy for travelers using their cell phones. Like homes built before cell towers, empty plug-in wall sockets dot some terminals.

But what you will not find are numbered boxes attached to a silver cord with a handset at the end. Some of you reading this post don’t even know what a handset is.

Why do I care that airports don’t have pay phones?

Because on my last trip out west, I forgot my cell phone at home.

50 minutes from home and 1 hour before my flight, I discovered the awful truth.

So I spent $5 on a 1 hour internet connection to send a score of emails to family, fellow-workers, those awaiting my arrival in Denver, and a friend who expected to get a text from me for dinner plans while In Colorado. Some took pity on me. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” was the normal response.

But it was my children who found some pleasure in ribbing their father. Chelsea responded to my email “I think it’s a sign” attaching the requisite smiley face thereafter. The “sign” of which my daughter spoke was “maybe this should tell you something.” But it was my son’s reply which made me smile and ponder the most. He said, “I will pray for your cell-phone-less self.”

Tyler coined a phrase “cell-phone-less self.” He also made me wonder about our collective dependence on what should function as a tool, but has become the adult version of a pacifier.

My gaze unobstructed by the 3 inch diagonal light from my own device, I watched others in the airport. The focused stare at a hand-held square of electronic wizardry consumed most around me. I watched as people finger-scrolled the screen through seemingly endless communications, emails, texts, recent calls, and internet searches. The constant finger-poking of ‘apps’—a shortened form of ‘application’—we can connect anywhere with anyone anytime, as long as no one pulls the plug.

Who is going to shut off the electricity? While defense analysts have planned for cyber attacks on electrical sources, Hollywood has put the idea into a new fall drama. NBC’s “Revolution” is the story of the world gone dark. An unexplained cataclysm has rendered cell phone lights useless. The viewer anticipates a throwback to smoke signals. TV promos for the show ran through my mind as I visually scoured the airport for a phone booth.

Even Superman would be hard pressed to find the privacy necessary to costume-change in an airport if he needed to rescue a faltering plane.

Which brings me back to my cell-phone-less self.

I reflected on a tool which we have allowed to become an appendage. A hand is not a hand without a hand-held device: the clutch of a small, square, piece of electric circuitry.

So I pondered.

1. Do we depend on the wrong things?
2. Is our dependence for text-messaging replacing face-to-face communication?
3. Should we begin to write more long-hand letters?
4. Should we return to using the legal pad rather than the I-pad?

Am I lost without a cell phone? Or have I discovered something about myself?

Mark now uses his cell phone most for shared pictures of his new grandchild.  The normal pose is marked with a wistful smile.  Mark does not allow his students, however, to use their cell phones while he teaches at Crossroads Bible College.