ring of fire

I was twenty-five, with two kids before I ever had my very own cell phone.  Shocking right?!  Well it's true.  Up until that point I never really had a need for one.  It was a sturdy little Nokia and I love this phone.  Naturally one of the first things I did was look into downloading ring tones.  Trying match the perfect thirty second sound clip with the right person.  It was time consuming and pain staking.  Well pain staking in that I had a hard time justifying spending money on a clip of a song.  Not the whole song, but just a snippet.  To know me is to know that this sort of thing does not jive with my cheap thrifty mentality.

Now, almost five years later I've given up ring tones of all types.  Especially those horribly obnoxious call back ring tones.  You know, the song of choice that the person you are trying to reach seems to think you would be delighted to hear while you wait for them to just answer their damn phone.  Yes, please, I love listening to Nickleback while you do lord only knows what and make me wait to answer. Awesome.  If you have such a thing on  your phone and wonder why you never hear from me ( and probably a lot of other people too) I hope this shed some light on the matter for you.

I think my enlightenment on the obnoxious nature of ring tones comes mainly from my times as a secretary.  I worked for a while at the local courts where things like cell phones were not permitted in the court room.  If, for whatever reason, a person had no place to safely store their phones I would agree to hold them at my desk.  On the condition that the phones where completely turned off or at least set to silent.  Well a few slipped by.

Nothing is more embarrassing when you are trying to do your job, a very public job, and suddenly you hear something along the lines of  "to the window, to the wall, till the sweat drips down my balls".  Imagine me red faced and fumbling to turn off this offending little piece of technology on my desk while I sputter and try to explain that this phone does not even belong to me, I swear!

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy some good offensive music from time to time.  However, I enjoy it in the comfort of my own home or in my own ears via headphones.  I don't explode it from my car stereo or through my cell phone while I wait in line at the bank or grocery store.  My phone almost always stays on vibrate.  This works for me, until it gets lost (which is often) and have a hard time calling the phone to locate its whereabouts.

So please, can we cool it with the ring tones?  That'd be awesome.  And you would save money, so double score!