Cell Phone Tango

It's not that I'm ignoring you, the caller. I'm ignoring the call. Forgive me.

It's fairly well established that when it comes to cell phone etiquette, I leave much to be desired. I rarely return missed calls if no message is left, I don't often conclude text message conversations, I can't be trusted to answer my cell when it rings no matter when it rings or who it is.

When discussing cell phone etiquette, by all accounts, I'm an inconsiderate jerk.

Most people I know (especially the people that call me) follow the established rules of interacting on the cell phone. My problem isn't with understanding these expectations but in identifying who set these expectations.

When I graduated high school, very few of my classmates had cell phones. By the time graduated college four years later, I was in a severe minority of those who still did not own one.

Four years is an extremely short time to establish socially acceptable behavior for an entirely new technology, especially after spending the first 22 years of my life working under a different set of expectations.

Immediacy is the ingredient adding most of the flavor to the cell rules I so loathe. When home phones were the norm, if the person you were calling wasn't home, you waited, or you went to plan B (if you had one). Cell phones provide a tacit agreement that anyone with your phone numbers as immediate access to you.