I love cell phones. I was a late-comer to the whole concept, but now I’m a big fan. I promise this isn’t a rant about cell phones and how they’re bringing about the destruction of the human race and are the first sign of the apocalypse.

This isn’t even a rant about people who use cell phones while driving. Admittedly it’s dangerous, but I’m guilty of it more often than I’d like to admit, and I try to avoid being a hypocrite whenever possible.

But this is a rant. It’s a rant about the odd places people answer their cell phones—and the odd conversations to which they subject strangers.

For example, my husband and I took our son to a St. Louis Cardinals game last month. We had been looking forward to it for a long time, had great seats, and were generally flying high. The stadium was packed with fans, which meant I was sharing an armrest and breathing space with a woman to my right. Fine and well. Until she answered her cell phone in the first inning and didn’t hang up until the third.

This wasn’t an emergency call that she took. It wasn’t even a you’ll-never-guess-the-amazing-catch-I-just-saw call. The one-sided conversation I heard consisted of, “What are you doing later tonight? Us? Oh, I don’t know, maybe catch a movie. I saw a great movie the other day…”

I was stunned—and annoyed. The best part was that she kept losing her signal and shouting “Hello? Hello? Hello?!” I kept hoping she would realize, perhaps the fourth time she was disconnected, that it was a sign from above indicating that a major league ballpark wasn’t the place to discuss The Dukes of Hazzard with your best friend in Cleveland.

She also kept giving me the evil eye whenever I cheered; apparently I was disrupting her phone call. Which just made me cheer louder. Go Cards!

By the time she placed a call to another friend of hers in the fifth inning, I figured it was just my bad luck to have been seated next to the one odd person who would use a cell phone at a ballgame.

But then a phone rang directly behind us, and the owner answered it. It was a call from Aunt Clara, who lives in Michigan—at least that was the general consensus from all of us sitting in the section. The phone was passed from family member to family member so Aunt Clara could talk to everyone in turn, each one filling her in on his or her life.

Here’s the thing: everyone understands emergencies. That’s why most people say they have cell phones—for emergencies. There are certain times, however, when you just shouldn’t take a call.

For instance, if you’re a dental hygienist and you’re cleaning someone’s teeth, don’t take the call. Yes, this actually happened to me the last time I went for a check-up. The hygienist was scraping my teeth with that sharp metal thing, when I heard her cell phone ring. My first thought was, “Oh, how embarrassing for her; she forgot to turn her cell phone off.”

Nope. She handed me the scraper and the water pick she was holding and distractedly told me to “go ahead,” while she answered her phone. I still have no idea what exactly she wanted me to “go ahead” with.

I was certain she must have been waiting on a very important call to interrupt a patient’s appointment. Nope again. I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation (and it was a conversation), but I remember dinner plans being mentioned and thinking, “I can’t believe she kept me waiting for that!”

The moral of the rant? Cell phones are wonderful, magical things—but nobody cares what you’re having for dinner. Especially when they’re drooling on an absorbent bib. TPW