Rites of Patches

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I gave in to the extreme social pressure and expensive convenience that is associated with the temptation I finally gave in to. No, I didn’t start drinking or bedding loose women. Actually, now that I think of it, neither of those temptations actually work with the first sentence, but hey, I’m shock. And so will you once you find out what I did.

I got a cell phone.

No seriously, I got a cellular communications device.

This phone has been a long time coming. After my freshman year, I finally got contacts. Later that year, I bid farewell to my embarrassing side-part that no one was gutsy enough to tell me looked like an underachieving primate without opposable thumbs did my hair with a Barbie comb. This last year, I retired my old computer and got a PC with Windows XP. It’s gonna be tough getting used to these hard discs being called floppy discs all of a sudden.

With one fell swoop, I have finally caught up with the trends associated with the year 2002. Now that I have a cell phone, I can do several things, such as call and be called despite my sister drawing anime on the computer for 9 hours a day. I could leave my phone on during class or Church and pretend it’s not me when someone calls. I can be a total ass and check my cell phone for the time despite the fact that I am wearing a watch. I can blabber loudly on the Link concerning things nobody else gives a shit about. I can become a ½-ton bullet on the road, searching for somebody to hit. I can interrupt my dinner companion mid-story to take a phone call from a person I could just as easily call back after dinner. I could text message people despite the availability of instant messaging, which offers the ability to type each letter with a single key-stroke, or God-forbid, call them.

While this cell phone will usher in a new period of my life, it does have several very serious repercussions for you. First, you are going to have to try even harder to avoid me:

Me: Hey, dude. When are we gonna hang out, man?
Rather-Not-Be-Friends Guy: Uh….Yeah, sorry, bud. I……uh…..couldn’t get a hold of you this last week. You just weren’t around.
Me: Oh. Well, you have my cell number, remember?
Rather-Not-Be-Friends Guy: Uh……….. (Man, that’s embarrassing)

Second, you place your last lunch in extreme hazard every time you watch me attempt to operate my phone. So far, I can totally lock and unlock it, all by myself since the nice telecom lady showed me. Third, you will have to tolerate my series of awful ring tones. Lastly, this means that cell phones are no longer cool, so you should immediately sell yours or upgrade to a satellite phone or go “retro” by tying paper messages to a brick and throwing them at your friends. No, seriously, I can instantly kill a trend by merely voicing my approval or deciding to consider giving it the ole’ proverbial thumbs up. Remember Zubas? Those things f’n rocked, didn’t they? Yeah, I killed them.

Now that I have gotten a cell phone, here are a few over things you can expect in the near future:

• Hell freezes over
• Jack Bauer is beaten in a fair fight.
• Or an unfair fights for that matter.
• I vote for a pro-choice Democrat
• Garrison Keillor actually says something humorous.
• President Bush admits that invading Iraq may not have been the best of ideas…..immediately following a sweeping victory against the insurgents. You decide whether an admission of a mistake or a victory is more unlikely.
• Snakes on a Plane eclipses Citizen Cane as the greatest cinematic performance in American history, earning the Samuel L. Jackson/Overgrown King Snake ticket a nomination for president from the newly merged Republicrat party.
• Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, Gweneth Paltrow, and Al Franken issue formal apologies for being massive douchebags.
• Family Guy stops using recyclable, repetitive, pop culture references in the place of jokes.
• All the members of U2 die at the same time, ironically of AIDS.
• Other people finally acknowledge my superior musical tastes.
• Ozzy Osbourne dies and is assumed into Heaven as God shows the music-video of “Bark at the Moon” on a massive Jumbo-tron on the sky.
• “Crazy” theories such as the “Larry the Cable Guy Sucks,” “Equal Rights,” and “Evolution” catch on in the South.

Okay, none of those things will happen, but I’m totally stoked. I have a phone. I now have the incomparable Breaking Benjamin’s “So Cold” as my ass-kicking ringtone. All that’s left is to sit back and wait for the phone calls to rain down upon me……………….Yup……Just, uh, waiting for the calls……….To rain and stuff…………Gonna rain soon……………Uh……….