Talking on the phone is highly overrated

That one worse-case scenario would send all the accumulated comfort about having sooo controlled your environment dashing into rubble.

Besides, being bugged by a phone ringing every now and then is plain absurd. How awful that you might be urgently needed for something.

 

My wife knows to text me if it is an emergency. I can always look at a text, but I cannot always take a call.

 

Well-said.

 

You can always look at a text in your dreams?

 

Yes.

Well, exactly.

Texts and e-mails are wonderful communication methods but, please.....let's not denigrate the phone, which gives an immediacy that is sometimes not only necessary but vital.

Yeah, the phone can be an annoyance. And I do screen calls from time to time. But I appreciate its importance far more than I dislike what's detrimental about it.

 

So you'll be wearing a helmet in the car now? Packing your own parachute for a plane ride? Building a bomb shelter with a 20-year supply of food and some sort of water system?

Planning your life around worst-case scenarios isn't rational. It's an entirely emotional reaction.

 

OK, Spock. Your attempts at mockery are silly. Urgent calls are more frequent by many multiples than plane crashes, and infinitely more frequent than a nuclear winter in the U.S. And there's plenty of structural protection in your car. There is no protection against not knowing something urgent if you do not keep your phone on.

 

Okay, so if you can agree with that, then can you agree that we all have different emotional reactions to things? And that's okay?

It's okay to be annoyed by the phone. It's okay to fear the day you don't answer it is the day you wish you had.

(Actually, I have thought about bike helmets for taking the car on a highway. In purely rational terms, it'd probably be a good idea and would save a lot of lives if widespread. But I don't want to look like a dork, so I risk it).

 

I'm sorry if you found my initial two-word post to be any kind of Aristotelian assent.

 

I rarely answer the phone. If work calls, I answer it - sometimes

If a source calls, I answer it.

If my wife calls, I answer it.

If it's anyone else, they can leave a voice mail.

 

God forbid people care about their families and keep their phones on.

 

I definitely keep it on way more now post-children than prior.