The Nothing

Everybody loves the internet. Except really old people, or really rich people that didn't earn their money using computers so they have always paid someone else to use the internet for them, thus never learning, thus never loving. I don't have the internet at home, but that doesn't mean I can't love it. The same does NOT hold true with cell phones. I don't love cell phones, I just use them because since everyone else does, the inconvenience of not having one outweighs not paying $60 a month to talk on the phone. When I started college, we had a land line that we split four or five ways depending on how many roommates we were. We'd each pay like eight bucks a month. There were enough of us holding out, avoiding the mobile revolution, to still feasibly keep the land line. But man cannot outrun machine, and one by one we were overtaken by the rolling charge. Like The Nothing from Neverending Story, which had a scary cover-my-eyes-and-tell-me-when-it's-over wolf scene. By the end of college, EVERYONE had cell phones, so people weren't willing to pay for a land line on top of their cell bill. I still cringe every time I get my phone bill and see how much money I am spending to be able to talk on the phone. But here I am, spending most my lives living in a gangster's paradise. With a cell phone.