CNN tells me the whole world is abuzz over the imminent release of the Snapple Phone 5… or was it the Gooseberry Smellphone 9981… or maybe the Androgynous Flan 4.2? Somehow the exact name escapes me – tasty as they all sound – probably because I’m completely sold on my own, personal mobile device: the truly versatile NOkidd’n NOphone. Believe it or not, my NOphone has been serving me faithfully for 71 years, nonstop and has never gone out of range and never let me down, even in the remote and barren wastes of the Saudi desert where I once spent some time.
Still more extraordinary, I’ve never had to change the battery in all that time and as for operating costs, I have yet to pay even a centavo. So, in my opinion, when it comes to telephones, there’s nothing quite so good as NOphone! Allow me to enumerate its other virtues:
It never interrupts you in the middle of a good story or conversation.It offers 24-hour-a-day protection against unexpected chores, appointments and other burdensome duties your boss or your spouse might desire to foist upon you.
It guarantees that no one will be able to locate you for as long as you manage to stay out of sight.
It forces the entire world to send you e-mails or letters which you can take days to open, weeks to ponder, and months to answer or conveniently forget.
The only problem I’ve encountered as a NOphone owner is that I often stand out in a crowd as the only person not holding one hand up to his head. The ploy I’ve developed for such occasions I call the old “thumb-in-the-ear trick,” accompanied by occasional mumbles and nods, thanks to which I now fit right in, even among a gang of teenagers.
Does the above list of advantages take you back to an earlier time, to what we might call the Golden Age of Disconnect? Well, those halcyon days of no cell phones were not quite halcyon enough for me when I moved to Mexico in 1985. That’s one of the reasons I jumped at the chance to live in Pinar de la Venta (eight kilometers west of Guadalajara):
“No street lights? No TV reception? Spotty electricity? No telephones whatsoever? – I’ll take it!” I told the seller of a little house lost in the woods … while my wife Susy was bedazzled by the multitude of birds, butterflies and bougainvilleas in this mountain-top paradise.
Life without a telephone proved truly blissful for me as a writer, but what happens when you NEED to make a call? Well, on those occasions we would get into the car and drive five kilometers to the more affluent community of Rancho Contento which had a real pay phone where we could place our call – if the operator happened to be awake.
That was more than sufficient for me until the day Tom Pendergast came to visit from Japan, in the 1990s. Tom was then director of a language-study program at International Buddhist University in Osaka and had asked us to find host families in Guadalajara for twelve charming Japanese girls. That turned out to be a most interesting and rewarding project and Tom had arrived for the final Good-Bye Party, where copious tears were shed by the girls and their hosts alike.
“I need to make a phone call to Japan,” Tom told me at the end of his first day here. “No problem,” I replied. “I’ll take you straight to Telmex in Guadalajara.”
We walked up to the Telmex building and were told inside that they no longer had booths for long-distance calling. “Just use one of our ultra-modern pay phones outside,” explained a smiling señorita.
“No problem,” I repeated to Tom. “I brought along a bagful of change. And look, there are actually ten phones all lined up and waiting for us.” However, as luck would have it, someone had forgotten to empty those phones of the monedas which had accumulated during the day and it was impossible to insert the many coins we needed to call Japan.
“No problem,” I grinned. “We’ll just stop at Rancho Contento on our way to Rancho Pint. That phone always works.”
Fatal words. It was pitch dark and quite late by the time we reached Rancho Contento. One flickering street lamp lit up the desolate parking lot where the pay phone – our last hope –awaited us in dreadful silence. We opened the door of the booth and beheld a hastily scrawled sign: NO SIRVE.
Poor Tom now looked worried indeed. Less confident now, I skipped the no-problema preamble. “Listen, Tom, I have an English student here. Her name is Conchita and she lives up the street. It’s nearly 9 p.m. but this is an emergency, so let’s go knock on her door.”
Never will I forget the look on Conchita’s face when she saw who was standing outside her door at that hour, unannounced and unexpected. Worst of all, her hair was in curlers. We had broken every law in the Book of Mexican Etiquette, if such a thing exists. Conchita, however, has a heart of gold. She took one look at Tom’s ashen face and invited us in – with countless apologies for receiving us in such a state. At long last, Tom Pendergast was able to contact Osaka and assure the worried parents of those twelve lovely girls that they were perfectly safe and extremely happy, in spite of the fact that a cardinal had been gunned down at the airport of the very same city.
It may now be evident why Mexicans have taken to cell phones like Italians to spaghetti. It may be less evident why I don’t have one in my pocket right now, but I’ll tell you why: I would never have been able to finish this article in one sitting. Viva el NOphone!