Hands-Free Isn't Really

Anybody traveling via Southwest Airlines this holiday weekend seated near a screeching child who can't seem to get enough peanuts will be strapped into a flying death trap festooned with red white and blue pieces of heart-shaped paper and ribbons...

Yeah, I can't wait until they allow the insecure Hollywood wannabe behind you in seat 28C to blow hard into a cell phone for the entire flight. He'll blather on about this film deal or that film deal at the top of his lungs, repeating himself because the poor sap on the other end can't hear what Joe Hotair says half the time because the reception hops from one cell tower to another every 3 minutes.

"YEAH ... I'M ON THE PLANE!.... I SAID I'M ON THE PLANE!....ANYWAY, I THINK BRIDGET WILL PAIR NICELY WITH MATTHEW BRODERICK... ASK BILLY BOB IF HE'S READ THE SCRIPT YET... PEACE OUT.... I SAID, PEACE OUT! "

This is the same yahoo you will be stuck behind in traffic on Sunset Blvd. who hasn't quite succumbed to the new Hands Free law. He drives erratically, narrowly avoiding the death of others around him, while a cop pulls YOU over for a dead tail light.

But I'm here to bitch about something entirely different.

One of the more annoying things I own is the ear piece for my cell phone. I'm in a no-win situation with the frickin' thing in that I can't stand talking for more than 5 minutes on any phone without a headset of some sort because my elbow and my neck start bugging me. But I hate using the ear piece I have because it takes forever to untangle the mess created by stuffing it in my pocket, or my purse, or my backpack, or wherever I stuffed it last, then stick it in my ear while fumbling with the the rubber thingy to go around the back of my ear, and then plug the cord into my cell phone. And I only have that luxury if I'm the one placing the call.

If someone calls me and the phone rings in my car, I invariably hang up on the caller trying to scramble with the phone, shove in the ear piece, avoid pressing the answer button until the ear piece is snugly in my ear, and trying not to soar off a cliff while appeasing the caller who twenty years ago would have to settle for waiting until I got home.

I don't get called enough to justify sticking the damn thing in my ear "just in case" and ride around getting the cord all tangled up in the gear shift knob and the steering wheel.

Get a blue tooth ear piece, you say? I did. Wanna hear about that too? I bought this damn thing that came with vague-at-best instructions that did not seem to match its actual function. It became immediately useless in my travels because it has a battery that requires recharging. And you have to remember to do it every day, or else the one day you actually need it, the battery has died and now you can't use this stupid thing that by the way doesn't even feel like it will stay in your ear. It just loosely hangs on like an earring and you know it's going to drop on the ground any minute and you don't want to walk around with that thing in your ear either because it doesn't look "cool" like everyone else's designer blue neon-lit hardware that appears to mold to the user's ear. They don't spend half their time in line at Starbucks twisting and cramming at it to get it to "STAY GODDAMMIT ALREADY!". That's right, I have headset envy, so what?

And you have to remember to pack the recharger on your trip and for someone like me who travels a lot, that is so not happening. I have enough garbage and gadgets to bring back and forth with me every trip. Over time I have duplicated rechargers so that I don't have to carry all that crap. I didn't want to buy ANOTHER charger for ANOTHER gadget. Enough already!

MrMudPuppy said he saw more people hands-not-free on July 1, perhaps out of rebellion. I can understand that. I stopped wearing my seat belt as soon as a law was going to take effect two months later that required the use of seatbelts. Here I was, using my seatbelt because I was concerned about safety, but as soon as the government decided to take away my choice, I was going to live on the edge as long as possible, because I could. Never mind that it was insane and unsafe, it was the principle of the thing in my young and stubborn mind. Oh sure, on Day 1 of the seatbelt law, I honored and obeyed, because I'm a complete chicken when it comes to getting into possible trouble. But I squeezed out every drop of choice up until the day - never mind that I was risking my life.

And then there were people like my Dad and stepmother, who never wore their seatbelts - I don't know why. They must have figured they were above the law, or because of their profession, they could get tickets written off all the time because they knew a lot of cops. Funny how they fraternized with law enforcement, and I don't know any cops. Not one single one. I can't relax for a second if I see one nearby. As soon as I see a pohleece, I check myself for contraband, miles-per-hour, guilty facial expression, whatever I could possibly be busted for, even though I'm innocent, but for some reason, I'm unreasonably paranoid about winding up in the klink.

Maybe because I haven't spent much time with cops, I don't think of them as real people and I have no idea how to behave around them. I spend my whole life trying to avoid any contact with them because I know the minute I'm in some strip club that gets raided one night, a comedy of errors will ensue and I'll be shuffled off to prison for some beauracratic mix-up that takes years of paperwork to straighten out while I toil away in the prison library writing my life story about how I was screwed by the justice system.

But I was talking about my dad and stepmom's anti-seatbelt attitude. But that was years ago. Now it's just my dad, who can't really see anymore, so I drive and my car will yell at you if you do not fasten your seatbelt, so he no longer has that choice.

But before that I was talking about the new hands-free cell phone law. And the conspiracy under foot that requires us to purchase lousy ear pieces designed to work like tires and light bulbs where we are forced to replace them frequently. God forbid they design it to last to our satisfaction, or stay charged for more than 3 hours, or not require batteries at all.

But before that, I was talking about red, white and blue, and basically, I just wanted to wish you a Happy Fourth of July.

Peace out.

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NGIP would like to throw a big fat shout out to Jennifer at Playgroups Are No Place For Children for linking to Nanny Gotas the other day, driving ridiculous traffic to this site. That link also prompted Vicki over at Creekside to link to us and add NGIP to her blog roll (WOO HOO!).

And.... THANK YOU to Apathy Lounge for adding us to her Insane Clown Posse blog roll. It's an honor and a privilege to be labeled as Insane, as well as a Clown!

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