Cell phones cause tooth decay
Guest Commentary One person's viewpoint
Mack Hall

The Times of London reports that scientists are exploring the possibility that cell 'phones cause cancer.

Obviously this is not true; otherwise there would be no teenaged girls left alive on this planet.

Still, one would like to think that cell 'phones, attached to hands and ears as firmly as tumors, were declared a health hazard, and that the wretched things were banned. Imagine what a happier world this would be without cell 'phones:

Married men would find peace at last, free of that electronic choke chain.

Funerals would no longer be interrupted by the insistent "Bleedle-eedle-blooodlebleedle eedle-leedle-eedle-blooodle-bleedleeedle bleedle-eedle-blooodle-bleedle-eedle" racket from a purse left near the coffin by a woman who disappeared into the bathroom before the service began.

The few remaining cell 'phone users would have to cluster out back next to the dumpsters along with the three surviving smokers.

Sales clerks trying to make change and complete transactions would not have to try to talk through one-sided conversations involving the complex romantic soap operas of stupid people.

The phrases "Can you hear me now?" and "An' she all up in my face...!" would disappear from the culture.

Drivers would return to handling only the steering wheel, a hamburger, a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a couple of screaming children instead of the steering wheel, a hamburger, a cup of coffee, a cigarette, a couple of screaming children, and a cell 'phone.

Reformed smokers (and is there anyone more tiresome than an exsmoker?) who bore people at the lunch table about how they quit

would have to share time and egos with reformed cell 'phone talkers who bore people about how they quit.

Weddings would no longer be cursed with all those hands held up in the air in a sort of cell 'phone Nazi photo salute as the bride processes down the aisle.

College students could meet each other and have, like, y'know, conversations. Live. In person.

Valley Girl-Speak would join Communism in the rubbish heap of history. Totally.

Blue tooth would mean someone really needs to get to a dentist right now.

No more people walking around with tin crickets pinned to their ears and talking to the Mother Ship.

Finally, if cell 'phones were banned, families would sit together in the evenings reading the Bible and Charles Dickens to each other, and young people in urban gangs would leave off violence and begin discussing whether Sinopoli or Von Karajan does the best interpretation of Wagner's Die Valkure.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville