Out of the stone age, full speed ahead

Okay, so last weekend my husband and I threw off our horse and buggy and left behind our Amish ways once and for all. We got *gasp* cell phones. It has long been a point of pride for us not to possess such foul and loathsome devices, and we were rather sorry to have to step foot into the modern world and bite the bullet. It has become painfully obvious to us that it is impossible to function in this world without cell phones. Two botched travel arrangements and much stress later, we stand united in the cell phone store, explaining to the impossibly young girl behind the counter that we have NO IDEA how to turn the damn things on, much less send or receive any kind of message, be it text, audio, photo, email or video. "Pretend we're Amish," I say to the girl, "and explain it to us slowly."

"What's an Amish?" she responds.

God help me.

Several hours and many cups of coffee later, we arrive home with our new phones. I feel like Harry Potter on his first day at Hogwarts. Surely this thing is magical. The numbers just glow out of the front of it when it's closed. How does THAT happen, I wonder?

My (ahem) much older brother swears I am a freak of nature in my nearly obsessive avoidance of all things modern and labor-saving. Really, that's not it. With every new device to which I am shackled (ipod, cell phone, digital camera, laptop, etc.) I feel a little more of my freedom scraped away. Soon all that will remain is the bare bones of what once was a robust and glorious freedom to...do whatever I want, with no interruptions, no frantic searches for connections/plugs/ ports/blue teeth.

What happened to simply disappearing for a long weekend in, say, Paris, completely and blissfully cut off from work and the world at large, to come out rested and relaxed on the other side of it?

I truly detest the idea of being hunted down at all hours and in all places. For that reason, I am giving none of you my phone number.