Los Gatos Weekly-Times

It's getting tricky to be out to lunch

By Sue Fagalde Lick

I was reaching for my wallet to pay the lunch tab when my purse rang. Well, not exactly my purse, but the cellular telephone tucked inside it. Conscious of the people at the surrounding tables staring at me, I pulled out my phone, extended the four-inch antenna and proceeded to speak into a chunk of plastic and metal.

The restaurant was noisy, and I could barely hear. The caller was a woman I wanted to interview, but I never expected her to call here and now. I scrambled through my rats nest of a purse looking for something to write on and with. Meanwhile, the busboy was asking if I wanted more iced tea, the hostess was waiting for me to pay up and vacate the table, and I was being held hostage by a telephone.

When I finally hung up, interview set, address written on the back of a receipt, the woman at the next table shook her head. "You can't get away anymore, can you?"

Nope. Lunch used to be my escape, just me, a good book and a tall glass of iced tea. For one blessed hour, I was "out to lunch," which meant no one could reach me.

Driving used to be another time when one could escape the infernal machine. I could crank up the stereo and be unreachable.

Not anymore. I can't even go to the restroom without risking a telephone ringing at a most inopportune time. Do I let it ring? Do I pretend in my most businesslike voice that I'm sitting at a desk when I'm actually reading in the porcelain library?

There's no escape. My phone rang as I was checking into a motel a couple weeks ago. Is this a good time, asked the caller? No, I wanted to shout, I've been on the road all day and I'm exhausted, but in the way that all longtime reporters develop, I said, "It's a great time.

I used to sneer at the Silicon Valley folks driving around with telephones at their ears. What bad manners, I would think when someone whipped out a phone at a restaurant or in line at the theater. At the airport, so many people had cell phones attached to their ears I wondered if they were pretending to talk on the phone just to impress people.

Suddenly I'm one of those people telephoning in the car. It costs a fortune. I have to pay not only for the calls I initiate, but for "air time" for the calls that people make to me. So I use it only for business and emergencies. Those calls that interrupt my lunch or my drive are calls I've been waiting for, calls I need. People who use cell phones for social calls must be making a lot more money than I am.

Cell phones can be handy. My very first call came when I was driving on I-5 near Mount Shasta. My brother wanted to warn me it was snowing up ahead. Good to know.

They also have their drawbacks. Anyone who claims he can drive safely while using a cell phone is fooling himself. And the friend whose cell phone rang just as he walked into our church on Easter Sunday probably wished he could drown it in the baptismal font.

I have made a worthwhile discovery, though. There's a little black button near the bottom of my phone. It says "off."

If you get a message saying I'm not available, you'll know what happened: I'm out to lunch.

Until she moved to Oregon, Sue Fagalde Lick was a feature writer for the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.

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