Cell phones are a funny thing. When somebody gets one and gives the number out, it's considered almost tacit acknowledgement that they want to be reached anytime, anyplace, anywhere. And that they will always have one around and turned on, or at least turned off during certain things but will checked immediately upon leaving the thing that they needed to turn it off for. That's what cell phones are for, aren't they? So people can communicate with people anywhere at anytime?

Which is why it's becoming one of those things that when a person with a cell phone either doesn't carry their cell phone, doesn't answer their cell phone, or check their cell phone message, people get annoyed with them. They have a cell phone, damnit, so why aren't they using them? How is anyone supposed to get in touch with them if they never bring their cell phone anywhere?

Even those of us who are still cell-phone free-the luddites who hate the principal of always being able to be reached, the impoverished who can't afford them, or those who realize that their lives aren't exciting enough to warrant one- still get annoyed when someone with a cell phone doesn't actually use them. How dare the cellphoned not use their cellphones when the uncellphoned try to reach them.

So we've now added a whole other strata of social mores. Now, it's an issue of manners and politeness when somebody who has a cell phone doesn't actually use them. This is a cause of annoyance, a source of frustration, a sign of impoliteness. It's doubly worse than not returning a call because not only are they not returning the call, but they're breaking the agreement by not making it possible for them to reached at all times when they've let it be known that they can be reached at all times.

And how is anybody able to communicate with each other when people do things like that?