This bill's nothing to LOL about

I got a book in the mail recently. OK, it wasn’t exactly a book, but it came in a box the size and shape of a book. And it had about 200 pages in it.

It wasn’t from the booksellers at Amazon; it was from our friends at AT&T. It was a cell-phone bill and it gave a detailed, blow-by-blow rundown of every use of a cell-phone by la enfermera and our two oldest children during the previous month.

You see, I don’t have a cell phone; I only pay cell phone bills. It’s one of those privileges that comes with fatherhood.

What caught my attention wasn’t so much the financial tally, although I do wonder why a family needs $200 worth of telecommunications each month. It was the sheer volume of phone use that startled me. In addition to providing details — who called who and when — the bill numbered each phone use.

The itemization of our phone use went like this. The Oldest, our son Ben, had used his cell phone about 90 times during the month — not much when you consider that includes outgoing calls, incoming calls, outgoing text messages and incoming text messages. It was summertime when this bill arrived, but I can assure you that, now that he is off at college in Houston, he most certainly is not racking up countless cell phone uses on calls home to Mom and Dad.

Next came la enfermera, who clocked in at 200 to 300 uses of her cell phone during the month. Almost 10 calls a day seems like a fair amount, but quite a few of those were the result of “borrowings” — calls made by and received by our 13-year-old daughter.

Which leaves our older daughter, Sarah. The count began. 100, 200, 300 � Page after page. She hit 1,000 and it was still very early in the month. Calls going out, calls coming in and virtual torrents of text-messaging. 2,000, 3,000 and so forth.

I almost got crossed up when she rolled over the numbering on the bill; it only goes to 9,999 before starting over again at 0001. Believe me, rolling over your cell-phone bill is not nearly so satisfying as rolling over the odometer on your car.

The final tally came in at a jaw-dropping 13,000-plus uses of her cell phone. Now, I am aware of the speed at which the younger generation sends text messages to one another. They may not be able to read or write all that well, but they sure can take shorthand. Still, 13,000 is a stunning number.

Put into clearer perspective, 13,000 amounts to 433 uses per day, every day of the month. Or 18 uses an hour, every hour of every day. Sarah had just graduated from high school, so you can figure she didn’t spend that many of those hours sleeping, but that still is an astonishing figure.

Aside from things I don’t control — breathing, my heartbeat, etc. — I can’t think of anything that I would want to do 13,000 times a month. Certainly not talking on a phone.

My antipathy for phones isn’t just a guy thing. I’ve always been more attracted to the written word than the spoken word. I am, after all, a print journalist, not a talking head.

But I’m not some technology-fearing Luddite.

As I see it, there are plenty of reasons to dislike cell phones. There’s the erratic sound quality, which has turned more than a few people into loud-talkers. You know them. They are in a public place, like a restaurant, but they’re talking on the phone as if they are in a soundproof booth. “You know, buddy, there are other people in this restaurant!”

Sometimes, I cross paths with these loud-talkers and mistakenly think that they are talking to me. I’ll be walking down the aisles at H-E-B and someone will approach and say, “Hi there! How are you doin’?” I’ll turn to respond and spot the cell phone just in time to save myself untold embarrassment.

There are also the dropped calls so humorously portrayed on TV commercials and the phones ringing in movie theaters, at church and in other inappropriate places. And everybody’s familiar with drivers who are too busy chatting on their cell to observe the rules of the road.

Twice I have resisted la enfermera’s efforts to have me carry a cell phone — the first came when they were so big that you looked like a lineman for the phone company. Her rational was that she could “get in touch with me.” Like when I was coaching Little Leaguers at softball or baseball practice. Oh yeah, that’s exactly the time I want to be bothered with a phone call. Why not just have a tracking device implanted under my skin?

I have to admit that my resolve is weakening. Our two youngest children have their own phones now and I find myself increasingly wishing, when I am waiting to pick them up after school or at a friend’s house, that I could call them and tell them to come to the car, pronto!

Government isn’t making it easy to keep a landline. People are giving up their house phones in droves and a look at a bill could tell you one reason. There’s the Federal Subscriber Line Charge, the 911 Service Fee, the TX TIF Reimbursement, the Federal Universal Service Fee, the Texas Universal Service Fee, the Municipal Charge, the Federal Tax (Local Charges) and the Federal Tax (Non-regulated & Toll Charges). On my latest bill, they came to a 33 percent tax. That’s a whole lot of paying for things other than phone service.

Davidson is the Star opinion editor. He can be contacted at 430-6289 or at randyd@valleystar.com, but he cannot be contacted while on the ballfield, at the theater, in church or in the bathroom.