Sometimes, Tim Miller just doesn’t want to be found.
Sometimes, husband and wife Roger Martin and Barbara Yoder just want peace and quiet.
And sometimes, Bob Thurber will go an entire month without hearing a dial tone.
All reasons why the Lawrence residents don’t have cell phones. Yes, swimming against the heavy tide of convention, these folks don’t have them, don’t want them, don’t need them. OK, well, sometimes they admit they need them, but not as often as you might think.
The reasons vary about as much as the possible service providers they are snubbing. They range from wanting quiet, to feeling too connected, to labeling it an unnecessary expense, to just plain not needing one.
“Why does anyone want a cell phone? My life is full of communication, I get 50 to 100 e-mails every day. I have a phone at home and a phone at work. I don’t need more contact, I’ve got plenty,” says Miller, 65. “I listen to people walking down Jayhawk Boulevard talking on their phones and the conversation is usually about at the level of, ‘Oh, not much, what are you doing?’ I need to pay $100 a month for that?”
Of course, in some situations the cost and all the other cons can be outweighed by the convenience of being able to make a call from anywhere. Yoder, 52, a teacher at the Applied English Center at Kansas University, recalls being in a tight spot where she really wished she at least shared a phone with her husband, Martin, 63.
“I found myself in this situation where I was in charge of 12 Japanese students and we were waiting in 6 degrees at a bus stop, and it turned out to be the wrong bus stop and I really needed to have a cell phone in that case to do my job,” Yoder says. “One of the kids, fortunately, pulled out a cell phone and we were able to figure out we were at the wrong bus stop and remedy that. And, after that, I thought, ‘Man, maybe it’s time to rethink this.’ But, primarily, we don’t want any more complications than we already have in our lives.”
The need to have it while traveling has crossed Miller’s mind, and his wife, Tamara Dutton, even took it upon herself to buy him a pay-as-you-go cell phone for his trips around the state for research and other duties as a professor of religion at KU. But if he has it with him, it’s not on, nor will he call you from it barring a major car wreck or some other disaster.
And then there’s Thurber, who is just plain bothered by the whole idea of phones in general — he says he’s gone weeks without picking up his home phone or answering any except the most urgent of messages from family and friends. He’s so annoyed by the concept of a cell phone that when he passes drivers yakking away while on the highway, he has a special way of letting them know how he feels about their yammering.
“I have to say, I get pretty irritated, like a lot of people do, I’m sure, when someone is on a cell phone and driving and not paying attention,” Thurber says. “As a joke, I’ve got an old, mustard yellow rotary phone that I’ve put on my dash, just to show people that’s my mobile phone. And if I get really irritated ... I’ll pick up my receiver and shake it at somebody, but it hasn’t really happened very often.”
And lest you think the trend is just for folks who have lived most of their lives before the cellular age, meet Ashley Howard. At 25, Howard doesn’t have a cell phone, despite the fact that she has family out of state and many other people her age use their phones for constant Twitter and Facebook updates.
“I can afford to have one, I just chose not to. I had one, my contract ended in October, and I thought, ‘I don’t really use it that often,’ so I just gave it up,” says Howard, a receptionist who admits her day job might be a latent reason for getting rid of her cell phone. “It was kind of a needless bill. I mean, I have a house phone and my fiancé has a cell phone. I have long distance on my house phone — I have a lot of family out of state — and so I’ll often use that.”
Amanda Ostmeyer, a sales representative at Verizon Wireless at 2301 S. Iowa, says she sees at least one adult customer a week who has never had a cell phone. But more often than that, she sees parents buying phones for another subset who never before had cell phones: children.
“We have more and more children, around the age of 9 or younger, getting cell phones now. I’ve even seen people buy cell phones for an infant, just to have the phone in the diaper bag for the nanny,” Ostmeyer says. “It’s reaching the point where I almost think cell phones are going to be required.”
Thurber is pleased to be old enough to have made it through childhood and most of adulthood without constantly being that connected. Now, if only he can make it to his dying breath without knowing how to operate a BlackBerry.
“I joke around with my friends, I tell them that that’s my goal: to not own a cell phone before I die,” Thurber says. “I tell them when they have my funeral, they can throw their old cell phones with a couple of minutes on them in my casket and give me a call — stand about as good of a chance of getting an answer then as you do otherwise.”
Comments
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Graczyk (anonymous) says…
I had one. I used it exclusively - no land line. It was great when I was in sales. But now I have a different life and I don't need it. I have never sent a text either.
bearded_gnome (anonymous) says…
“I found myself in this situation where I was in charge of 12 Japanese students and we were waiting in 6 degrees at a bus stop, and it turned out to be
the wrong bus stop and I really needed to have a cell phone in that case to do my job,” Yoder says. “One of the kids, fortunately, pulled out a cell phone
and we were able to figure out we were at the wrong bus stop and remedy that. And, after that, I thought, ‘Man, maybe it’s time to rethink this.’ But,
primarily, we don’t want any more complications than we already have in our lives.”
---Oh, the humanity!
what did those old foagees do fifteen years ago, my gawd!
the Japanese students would've just frozen at the wrong bus stop!
IvanT (anonymous) says…
I am like that. I really do not like to be connected ALL the time. I do own a cell phone (one of the prepaid ones) and I very rarely use it. I really dislike that our world has become so cell phone obsessed. People are just not talking to each other face to face anymore, they prefer to sit on their cell phones all the time, even when in company.
But on the other hand it really is nice to have a phone just in case. That's why I went the prepaid route on owning a cell. My NET10 cell costs me very little per month but is always there, switched off a lot of the time, just in case I need it.
husker25 (anonymous) says…
I'm with Bobby T. In the words from the 1975 Sugarloaf song "Don't call us, we'll call you.
davidsmom (anonymous) says…
I do not own a cell phone. It is a personal choice for a number of reasons. I sit at the computer all day at work, pick up two phone lines at my desk, come home and get on the computer. I'll bet there aren't half a dozen times a year when I think it would be handy to have a cell phone - handy, not necessary.
yellowdot99 (anonymous) says…
I worked at King Radio ect to Honeywell and when they moved from Lawrence to K10 and K7 my son put me on his family plan for their cell phone. He was worried that I might have trouble on the roads and need to call for help. One time had to call for a roll over on slick K10, not me but a passing speeder. Now that I am retirered, I still am on the family plan and I love it to get in touch quickly with everyone and my grandkids think its cool that I can text them and usually get it right.
consumer1 (anonymous) says…
Wow!! I had no idea Lawrence had so many Menonites living here. You would think you would see more horse and buggies.
grammaddy (anonymous) says…
I do not own one either.I have a land line and since I rarely leave the house, I don't need a cell phone. My land line costs me $18.95 per month with 100 free minutes of long distance which I rarely use, unless some one I am calling has an "out of town" area code.I don't feel the need to be that accessible to anyone. If I'm not home when you call, call back later.
g_rock (anonymous) says…
The one thing that I don't understand: with the decrease of regular land line home phones, one would think that the phone companies would get better at what they do. But ATT/former SWB is still a pain to deal with in customer service. Now they are more concerned with their expanding television/cable/whatever offerings than the base of what their company is founded on. I would have a home line if it weren't such a pain.
Graczyk (anonymous) says…
We're not Mennonites, Consumer1. We're Luddites.
jbiegs (anonymous) says…
It's easy people, if you don't want to be bothered, don't answer!!!! Its the same principle as a land line, you don't have to answer your phone everytime it rings.
verity (anonymous) says…
Con 1, wrong again. Mennonites have cell phones, along with most other modern devices. Cell phones are especially useful for farmers to be able to communicate when they are out working.
The only phone I have is a cell phone (and I'm in my sixties). It's less expensive than a land line and way more convenient, especially when traveling. Somebody told me that they are removing the phone jacks in the KU dormitories---no one uses them and each one has to be paid for. It's way less expensive for students to have cell phones instead of having to pay the cost of turning on a land line every time they move.
While I agree that cell phones can be a distraction and it's annoying when someone interrupts a conversation to answer any and all calls, and they should not be used while driving, etc., I think the antipathy to them borders on, as Graczyk says, Luddism.
Made_in_China (Paul R. Getto) says…
Back when phones had wires, in one place I lived we hotwired the bell with speaker wire, ran it to the outside of the phone case and twisted the ends together when we wanted it to ring. Sometimes it was weeks in between turning it on. Nice and quiet. People sometimes asked "why don't you answer the phone?" We usually answered, "no one is home." Phones are to call other people when one wants to; I am amazed at the people who think they have to answer it just because it rings. Unless someone you care about is not home, or the kids are out and about, when it rings the proper question can be, "Is there anyone in the world I want to talk to right now?" In most cases the answer is 'no.'
beatrice (anonymous) says…
I have one, rarely use it except when travelling and have it available for emergencies. Haven't had it turned on in over a month, as I too prefer not to be tethered. If I'm not available, that is okay. Check with me later.
CreatureComforts (anonymous) says…
There are lots of people, usually older, bragging that they have avoided a cell phone and don't have a need for it. I go the other way...I brag that I have lifted out of the 20th (and 19th) century and do not need a land line!
Yeoman2 (anonymous) says…
I am 65 years old. I still work at a job, although I am old enough to have social security and retirement. I do not own any electronic fruits, pods or berries. I have absolutely no use for these annoying, expensive, undependable and stupid devices. I do not have stock accounts that I need to check each minute. I do not have family that cannot survive without consulting me every 10 minutes. I do not have any idle chatter and useless verbosity to bash and bore my friends with. Most of my friends have these little toy plastic devices, and it amuses me to no end what they pay out in fees, run around forgeting to charge the batteries, losing the damned thing, sitting in the toilet stall yammering with someone, standing in the middle of the aisle at Aldi's yelling "portobello mushrooms" at an unknown receipeint of this call, blocking the aisle at any given retail store utter oblivious to the people who have things to do and places to try to get to that they are blocking.
No, I regard these electronic annoyances as just another sign that the common sense of nearly everyone has left the building and that those of us who are trying to be made to feel somehow "not with it" are truly the only sane individuals left on the planet.
RETICENT_IRREVERENT (Ronaldo Ignacio) says…
Heck,
I am not even listed in the phonebook, those damn census people can just turn on their heel and run before the rocksalt load stings their derrière.
Yeoman2 (anonymous) says…
Got a pick with the Feds, eh, "irreveent?? Look up the penalties for making terrorist threats to government employees doing their legal and mandated jobs.
headdoctor (anonymous) says…
Interesting that some have a problem with certain types of technology and want to be disconnected from others, yet here they are online posting away.
none2 (anonymous) says…
CreatureComforts (anonymous) says…
There are lots of people, usually older, bragging that they have avoided a cell phone and don't have a need for it. I go the other way...I brag that I have lifted out of the 20th (and 19th) century and do not need a land line!
============================
I feel the same. I think a lot of the elderly fear change. The younger the individual the more they are open to change. I'm at the age, where I cannot imagine life without wireless voice & data service. However, for the life of me, I don't understand the younger generations that love to text with only phone keys to key in the message.
For myself I find that cell phones (when you have good coverage) blow the water out of land line phones. There are exceptions. For instance, in times of disasters, a land line may be more likely to work as they are separate from the electrical grid. Which, unless you have a solar charger or a car charger, is a plus when your battery is going low. Also in a disaster a tower might be damaged or without power after so much time. Another advantage to land lines are when one is on a long drawn out call with some company's customer service or a government agency. You don't want your battery to die on you. In advanced society, we will always have need for wired connections to our home. Wired connections ARE faster than wireless. We will probably eventually have fiber-optics to our homes for data with voice calls being handled as just one more use for data packets. We currently see some of that via VoIP communications. However, they still don't sound as good as the old fashion dedicated lines for a voice call.
There is nothing like having a cell phone when you are traveling. If you run into car problems, you can call for help. I even called 911 once because there were several cows on the road. If I had waited to get to my destination, who knows what might have happened to some unsuspecting driver. I know we have come a long way since the land line majority days. How many people really worry about long distance anymore. I remember when a call just 7 miles away could be a "long distance call". When was the last time you had to think about collect calls? With wireless data, who needs to call an operator to look up a phone number? Who needs to hunt down for the nearest pay phone?
(continued)
none2 (anonymous) says…
(continued)
I do think that there are people that have gone too far with cell phones. Talking on a cell phones in the bathroom is just really gross. Wouldn't it be great to have a whoopie cushion to use when people make calls there? It also makes you think twice before borrowing someone's phone with their dirty keys. Likewise, it is bizarre to see young people in groups where several are talking on the phone while ignoring the people right around them. Plus you are less likely to interact with new people you encounter if you are always tied to your fav five on the phone. That can make your life a bit stale besides missing out on meeting new, interesting people.
However, 50 or so years from now, people will probably look back on cell phones as primitive compared to some even more interactive communication devices.
parrothead8 (anonymous) says…
northtown (anonymous) says…
People who drive and talk neeed to be arrested.
Do you include people who drive and talk to other people in their car?
none2 (anonymous) says…
northtown (anonymous) says…
...Cell towers are ugly and put on every empty or used tallest place in town...
================
So are telephone phone poles and their wires, so are radio antennas, TV antennas, satellite dishes, so are most buildings, roads and parking lots..
We should just make everybody live underground and only allow plants at the surface.
Graczyk (anonymous) says…
For the record, some of us who eschew cell phones aren't elderly. Just sayin'.
I don't have a cell phone because I don't need one, not because they are evil.
Thinking_Out_Loud (anonymous) says…
I wish I had the willpower to give up my cell.
verity is only most accurate in his comment on Mennonites and technology. Certain Horse and Buggy Old Order groups, and other conservative Mennonite groups, refuse cell phone technology (among other technologies).
average (anonymous) says…
I have a prepaid. I use it a little more than Dr Miller. But, still, I get 800 minutes a year for $100. I haven't ever used half of that in a year, so I now have a couple thousand minutes built up.
I don't know that it so much Luddism or asceticism. Rather, for a lot of jobs, pay in Lawrence is quite low, and living costs, while cheaper than many urban centers, aren't that cheap either. Saving $600 or $700 a year makes a difference to a lot of people.
tubs_of_love (anonymous) says…
My jitter bug works just fine for me. The buttons are big enough for me to see, and I don't need all those fancy lights!
melott (anonymous) says…
Overheard from a student talking into a cell phone while walking to class:
"Oh, did he say I have a nice butt?"
crazyks (anonymous) says…
My daughter accuses me of not liking new technology...no, it's not that...I don't trust new technology...there's a difference...
Kids tend to think of cell phones, video games, etc., as just old hat, something they've always had and always will...I, on the other hand, have lived a lot of years, lived through a lot of different and new technologies, and...had every single one of them malfunction eventually for no apparent reason...
When I was a kid, we had TV and radios that were the old tube type...and though they messed up occasionally, not nearly as often as some of the new things that I have...usually then it just took a new tube to fix the problem...
Then came the days of transistor radios...when everyone listened to AM radio...I didn't even know such a thing as FM radio existed until I was a teenager...sounded a lot better, especially during storms, but it faded out a whole lot more often, too...FM signals don't travel nearly as far, because pesky little things like hills bother them...
When my mother was a kid, they had phones you had to crank before you made your call...then came the years where you only had to dial three numbers to get the other party...then came rotary phones, but they were stationary.. they were wired into the jack, and you couldn't unplug them...then there were push button phones, cordless, and finally...the cell phone...
All of which have messed up on me, for no apparent reason, at various times through the years...
Not to metion the days when cars used to be just cars, instead of computers on wheels...my car is a 1989 puddle jumper, and even it has various computer chips in the engine, which will go out on you randomly and are very expensive to replace...
I have old photos with actual negatives...so I had someone tell me that I should scan all of them onto my computer, then save them to disc...a lot safer, and then you won't lose your photos in case of fire or flood...
Really? The old floppy discs (in the hard plastic) seemed to last forever...but they didn't hold much data...then came CDs...but I have had them fail after just six months, getting the dreaded "this disc is not formatted" message, and losing all my saved info...I really wonder about this, as I have music CDs that I've had for 20 years and they still work perfectly fine...what is different about a computer CD?
So, no, I don't trust new technology...I've had just about every kind of technology mess up on me...but it seems as if the newer stuff does it more often...
I didn't get a cell phone until two years ago, and it was only because I was having a feud with AT&T about my land line, and I needed a phone of some kind...now I only have the cell, and due to AT&T being stubborn and unreasonable, I no longer have the land line...but I don't know that the cell is better...or any more reliable...