Why don't you just page me?

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Brad Wallace

It mystified me.

For me, pagers are still symbols of power and authority. If you've got a pager, you must either be a cardiovascular surgeon or a big-time drug dealer, the type of people who must be available at all hours of the day or night.

The world has moved on. Nowadays, if you've got a phone, you've got a pager. Scrawled numbers exchanged at bars are no longer even a ticket to an actual voice conversation, but rather the first step in a multi-day game of beeper tag.

It seems like every class I'm in these days is interrupted at least a few times by the reassuring hum of a pager.

There's a list of codes to remember: 411 if I'm just calling to say "hi," 911 in case I really need to talk to someone, and 6969 if I'd like to be a lecherous idiot.

I guess I'm just nostalgic for the long-ago days of 1994 when you'd just call and say "what's up?" when you wanted to talk to a friend, instead of having to keep a vintage World War II Enigma machine handy.

Maybe it's just that my life isn't all that interesting. If I'm lucky, I stumble home at night to have a couple of messages, none of which are ever pressing. There's never been a call so important that I could justify paying a monthly sum and strapping piece of plastic to my waist. I like the simplicity of an answering machine, there's no need to keep quarters around to plop into pay phones.

Sadly, there isn't a vibrating piece of plastic within a few feet of my genitals, either.

We are probably the most well connected generation ever. We can send e-mail to pretty much everyone we know, anywhere in the world, rain or shine. It's possible to order a Matchbox 20 CD via the Internet at 8 a.m., and have that cold piece of heartless music in your home by that evening. Little kids grow up with Yahoo! right next to their Legos.

I guess then, it should come as no surprise that so many are into communication just for the sake of communication. With a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure linking nations together, and humanity's total knowledge available over the Internet, it does seem selfish of me not to have a beeper.

How dare I distance myself from the communications superhighway? As citizens of the 21st century we have a sacred obligation to the free flow of information. No one must ever miss a call, again. Ever.

Don't even get me started on Caller ID, which although appropriate for law enforcement and the criminally stalked, is merely a convenient device for always screening calls. I don't want one because it would rob the telephone of what little romance it has left; my heart always jumps when the phone rings. Maybe it's someone important calling for me! Maybe I won the lottery! Maybe a telemarketer wants to sell me something!

Where's the fun in knowing before you answer?

Of course, the potential for backlash is enormous. Perhaps, 30 years from now, we will be tired of being connected to everyone 24 hours a day, every day since our 15th birthday. Folks will throw away the beepers, delete the e-mail accounts. It will be fashionable to carry around messenger pigeons (resurrected from extinction by wily molecular biologists) for those critical messages that absolutely have to be delivered within a few hours.

Of course, the pigeons may not have a convenient "vibrate" mode.

Brad Wallace is a creative writing and molecular and cellular biology senior. His column, Handful of Dust, appears every Tuesday and he can be reached via e-mail at Brad.Wallace@wildcat.arizona.edu.