Just when you think cell-phone antics can’t get any worse, you see something that’s nuttier than ever.?

I was walking down a residential Portland street the other day looking for something to write about and saw a woman wrestling with her shopping bags, trying to get them out of the car, while she talked on her cell phone.

And what was so vital that she had to cell-talk while trying not to dump her bags all over the sidewalk? Well, she was explaining to the person on the other end that she was taking her shopping bags out of the car and getting ready to go into her apartment.?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think this was TMI – too much information. It was information this woman could have kept to herself. People used to be able to take shopping bags out of cars and bring them into the house without feeling the need to share the experience by phone with friends.?

But the incident reminded me of years ago when I “experimented” with a few communication systems of my own. One afternoon when I was a kid, my friend Neil and I spent several hours making what today might be called “a dual-station, single-purpose communication system.” It was a neat walkie-talkie we saw in Boy’s Life magazine. According to the article and simple diagram, all we needed to make our own was a long piece of string and two Birds Eye orange juice cans. The article did specify Birds Eye cans, but then added that the cans of other juice brands could also be used.?

After getting our materials together, we ran the string between our houses – a distance of about 100-feet – and used a state-of-the-art sixpenny nail to poke a hole in the end of each can. We then threaded the ends of the string through the holes and tied a fat knot in each end of the string to prevent it from slipping out of the hole. Once the string was tightly stretched between our houses and the Birds Eye cans were securely in place, we tried to talk back and forth. We must have been way ahead of our time because, for the rest of the afternoon, we kept yelling into the can, “Can you hear me now?” just like that annoying guy in those old cell-phone commercials.?

The next day, Neil called me on the phone and said he had been trying to can me on the walkie-talkie. He wanted me to pick up my Birds Eye and talk. It was the only time I ever had a call holding on a juice can.?For the next several weeks Neil and I experimented with our communication system. We made a shorter version and used wire instead of string and that worked pretty well. Eventually we gave up and just called each other on the phone when we wanted to talk. It was a lot easier.

Come to think of it, lots of things were easier back then.?Remember when the phone rang and if you were there you answered it? If you weren’t there, it rang until the caller gave up. Simple.?Then someone invented the answering machine and before long it seemed like everyone had one, and in an attempt to solve one problem – missing phone calls – more problems were hatched, like not missing phone calls.?We’ve all heard the messages: “Hello, you’ve reached the home of Bobby and Barbara Schlahbotnik and all the little Schlahbotniks. We can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave a name and number, preferably your telephone number, we’ll get back to you as just soon as humanly possible.”?

With an answering machine, you would never miss another phone call, not even those annoying calls that you wanted to miss. A whole new set of rules and practices developed around the telephone. If there was someone you had to call but didn’t want to talk to, you could call when you knew the person wasn’t there and leave a vague message: “It’s me and I guess you’re not there so I guess I’ll just say I’m sorry I missed you and try to call me when you get back.” Then it was that person’s turn to try and reach you. This childish game of avoidance became known as “phone tag.”?

Then came the cell phone. As we all know, things are worse now than ever and there’s no place to hide.?

And just once, I’d like to have someone say, “John, you have a call holding on your Birds Eye.”

John McDonald is the author of five books on Maine. His latest, “John McDonald’s Maine Trivia: A User’s Guide to Useless Information,” is now in bookstores. Contact him at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com.

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