Dennis Sommers

“Come here Watson, I need you” are considered the first words spoken over a phone by Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant in 1876. Bell was the first to receive a telephone patent ten years later. Installation of poles and phone wire took a while. By the 1920s, roughly 20% of households had a phone. This grew to 75% by 1957 and 90% by 1970. But in 2024, land lines were in only 24% of homes. Most everyone over the age of ten seems to have cell phones now. 91% of these are smart phones.

Like others, my cell phone ownership has been a love/hate relationship over the years. My first love was a bag phone that resembled a brick in size and weight. Folks likely mistook me for Tom Selleck when The Brick was glued to my ear as I drove down Broadway. People exclaimed, “Look, there goes Magnum P.I. There must be an emergency somewhere.” This wish faded when a friend claimed the only emergency orthodontists have is “getting braces on before teeth straighten out on their own.”

Next in line were several Motorola DynaTAC versions followed by a flip-phone small enough that reading text messages required a microscope. This was the Columbo cell phone era – when wearing a phone on your belt was too showy and reading texts was easier if you had one glass eye.

Eventually a happy medium arrived: the Smart Phone. It fit easily into either front or hip pockets and was easily extracted to hear orders barked of what else to bring home from the grocery.

Standing in line to board a flight in 2014, I watched my phone’s screen turn black. Panic and angst set in. It wasn’t my first rodeo with a cell-phone catastrophe. I once slipped a newly acquired iPhone into my shirt’s breast pocket as I left the store and returned home to connect a trailer to the car’s hitch. As I bent over to hook up chains, the phone crashed to the pavement and shattered the screen. No one told me they didn’t bounce.

Last month on a trip to St. Louis, I took an Uber from the airport to the hotel, checked in and found my room. I noticed my phone was missing, finally concluding I left it in the Uber. Anxiety and depression screen-time researchers now know about returned yet again. I felt as I did at age nine, lost walking back to Grandma’s after swimming at a pool close by. I was scared not knowing what to do. With moist eyes back then, I knocked on the door of a random house, explained I was lost and asked for directions to 14th Street. The lady’s pointed finger provided help to find my way back. Now, sixty-five years later, I was lost again, with blurry vision, and didn’t know what to do, or how to find my way.

How could I possibly endure this mess without a phone or doors to knock on for help? Ubers don’t take cash and cabs aren’t plentiful anymore. How would I confirm my return flight, connect with meeting cohorts, get MapQuest directions or search Google to learn the difference between flotsam and jetsam? The only phone number in memory was one my parents used in the 1950s. I had traversed backwards in Marty McFly’s time/space continuum and arrived before Bell uttered, “Come here Watson, I need you.” Biff Tannen was breathing down my neck and not even Christopher Lloyd could bring me back to the future.

Arriving home days later with a new phone, Rita’s birthday needed celebrating. We enjoyed a pleasant evening and dinner out. But anxiety returned soon afterward. My phone was missing again. I have a phone-leash knotted tightly around my neck now. If you have questions about any of this, give me a call. Maybe I’ll answer.

Sommers is a retired Minot orthodontist, violinist with the Minot Symphony and author of the book, “Retirement? You Can’t HANDLE the Truth!”