It's bad enough that I have to own a cell phone (my wife and kids coerced me into that) and lately now a cell phone seems to be necessary for "two factor authentication" too.
I don't go shopping for a new cell phone until I lose or break my old phone. Then I spend a few days searching for the most primitive 4G LTE cell phone I can get.
When I was a feral young creature I lived out of a post office box and there were no cell phones. My parents and my siblings didn't always know where I was living and could only hope for the best. Sometimes it wasn't for the best. Thankfully I survived to tell the tales.
Now, as a parent I'm happy my own children have had cell phone since high school and I can call or text them. They've never ignored my occasional inquiries for more than a day or two. And I'd prefer they not wander out into the wilderness alone without their cell phones.
But there were so many times in my youth when I needed solitude to keep my mind straight --to be swimming in the surf naked on a deserted beach or running through a forest. A cell phone would have ruined that.
These newer cell phones (and I mean anything that's a flat Steve Jobs style slab) are the stuff of my dystopian nightmares.
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