I'M ONE of those dinosaurs who still has a telephone attached to my wall, and to the rest of the world, with wires. That's because the part of the world in which the little woman and I live isn't ready to be part of the “wireless world”. Most of my friends have gone cellular, which is why I have had to learn a new language, sort of like Pig Latin (ig-Pay atin- Lay). These days, I have to figure out the other end of a conversation while hearing only two out of every three or four words. I'm telling you, sometimes it's very difficult— even dangerous—to respond.

How do I answer my wife's friend, Sarah, when the question sounds like this? “I'd like blip have you blip blip over and maybe show blip blip blip and maybe blip blip breasts. Would you blip blip blip interested?”

“Uhhm . . .well . . . I'm sorry Sarah, could you say that again?”

My face turned red the other day while I was standing in the checkout line at Dan’s Market. I was in front of my buddy Roy’s son, Coleman, who had never had a lot to say to me.

“Hi, how ya doin'?” he asks.

“Good,” I reply. “You?”

“I'm good. Just got outta work. Stopped by Dan’s to pick up a twelve pack,” he says.

“I see that,” I reply. “So, how's the old man? I haven't seen him this week.”

Coleman looks at me funny, but keeps the conversation flowing. I'm quite flattered actually. “Hey man, wanna come over and catch the Sox game tonight? Maybe pound back a few cold ones?”

Now I'm really flabbergasted. “Oh, thanks Cole. I appreciate the offer, but I promised the little woman I’d take her to the bean supper down to the church tonight.”

Coleman just shakes his head and says, “Hey man, I gotta hang up. One of my dad's old buddies is standing next to me and keeps answering my questions.” He touches that Green Tooth, or whatever it's called, in his left ear and slaps me on the back. “Hi Joe, how ya doin’?”

I try to act as cool as possible and reply, “Oh, hi Cole; I didn’t notice you standing behind me.”

Dropped calls are particularly annoying. I hate it when I rattle off a most charming and hilarious story for two to three minutes, nail the punch line, and then listen for the response . . . silence. Now that's particularly tough for me because, about half the time, silence is the response to my hilarious anecdotes even without a dropped call; but when I realize I've been talking to myself for who knows how long, it really aggravates me. To make things worse, I'm suspicious that some of my friends have mastered the “dropped call fake”, and will use it at my very mention of a funny story.

If World War II made my parents part of the “Greatest Generation”, then cellular technology has turned Generation Y into the “Rudest Generation”. They don't seem to recognize that texting, tweeting, and answering the cell phone, five times during a ten minute conversation could make a guy feel his company is unappreciated and his words unimportant. God forbid they should miss a message on that little electronic gizmo. Makes me want to break their nimble little thumbs.

Call me an old-fashioned, backward thinking, narrowminded, old fool if you want to. Just don't call me on your cellular phone.

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