When I first heard about the hands free cell phone, I thought it was a brilliant idea. It was probably because I imagined long road trips and being able to talk without worrying about holding the cell phone in my hand or getting a ticket.
I did not buy one when they first came out, because I wanted to kind of hear some reviews before Imade a purchase. I called my cousin who had a hands free cell phone one afternoon while he was driving, and he told me that it was absolutely fantastic. He could talk on the phone and still concentrate on the road and traffic, and felt much safer doing so.
I had pretty much decided that I was going buy one when I encountered someone I had never met in the store who started talking to me. I looked over at her and smiled, and she kept right on talking.
Pardon me, I said.
She looked over at me and then motioned toward her ear, where I saw the speaker plugged in. I could barely even see the receiver that pointed down toward her mouth, and she passed by and kept right on talking. I honestly thought that she was talking to me.
A few weeks later, I had to go and speak to one of my editors about a rather involved and multi-part story that would take a little over a month to complete. She, too, had a hands free cell phone, and every few minutes, she would get a call and start talking to somebody on the phone. It was very confusing for me, because she would stop in mid-sentence, and just start talking to somebody else.
I began to re-think my position buying a hands free cell phone, and not just because it could be hard to tell who people using them were talking to, either.
I happened to be next to a guy in traffic who had one, as I would later find out, and was talking away with nobody else in the car. Until I finally realized that he had a hands free cell phone, I thought that he was crazy person. I had never thought about how that could look to other people, but it looked to me like the guy was talking to himself.
I have several friends who have hands free cell phones and swear by them, and there are advantages to having them. When I look back on the original reason I wanted to buy one, however, I realize that I don't really want to talk on the road bad enough to get one, and if I do need to talk to someone while I am out, I can always pull over.