My mobile phone

OH MAN, how times have changed. Usd t b dat u had 2 smoke sum wacky tabaccy 2 get dat glazed I luk. (Smiley Face.) Nowadays, you can get out of it without breaking the law at all or threatening the well-being of your liver.

All you need to do is develop a text-messaging addiction. No need for psychedelic drugs. No need for neat Pernod or bottles of Buckfast wine. No need either for prescription drugs.

Instead, take one small mobile phone and develop a dependence on it. Make it your personalised habit. Bring it to the loo. Buy a waterproof cover for its sorties into the shower. Sleep with it every night. Play games with it. Work-out with it on the treadmill. Even show it some TLC. Change its ring-tone regularly.

Then, use it as a crutch as you wait on tardy friends; a fashion accessory to match those new shades, that pair of turquoise Jimmy Choos.

Most importantly, send and receive millions of messages on it.

There was a national intake of breath when, early last month, Green Party Deputy Leader, Mary White, suggested that a one-cent tax on every text message would generate €1.4bn for the Exchequer.

She also proposed the tax should apply to all 25 million text messages sent by Irish mobile phone users every year.

Initial reactions were the usual cynical quips from the country’s purveyors of the smug status-quo. You know the type – County Mayo is filled with them – they love to snigger at just about everything the Greens represent.

Of course, in the interim, the debate in the spinning chambers of the media developed into the fact that Deputy White got her figures wrong. Apparently, the annual revenue from this innovative tax is closer to €91 million than €1.4bn.

But what about the real cost? I mean in the long term. What about the cost this text-messaging craze is exacting from our communication skills? What about the price this social disease is claiming on our literacy? Is text messaging not an insidious plague possessing almost every waking moment of our youth? 

Ok, I admit, it’s an age thing. Maybe, I simply resent the fact that I can’t multi-task anymore. For example, when I’m driving the car, that’s all I can do: drive the car. For some psychological or neurological reason, I can’t steer the car around a bad bend and text at the same time. Neither can I a cook a meal and text; watch my favourite soap and text; hoover the stairs and text; feed the cat and text. In fact, I can’t even hold a conversation and text at the same time.

Maybe I need counselling. Because, notwithstanding my shortcomings in manual-cerebral dexterity, I must confess I am otherwise very dependent on my mobile phone.

Take a recent trip to Dublin. I spent the day like a headless chicken because I inadvertently forgot it. Hot flushes transformed into anxiety attacks as I rummaged for my cute little Nokia in the morass that is my handbag. Stress lines appeared around my mouth as I imagined all the missed calls.

By the time the train pulled into Heuston Station I was suffering from acute mobile phone envy. Well, I had spent almost four hours eavesdropping on the private lives of half the population of Mayo, Roscommon and Westmeath.

That was while sitting across from a third-level student, who not only managed to prepare for an upcoming genetic engineering exam (I can still read upside down) but also listened to his iPod and partook in an ongoing text interaction throughout the entire journey.

Later, as my withdrawal symptoms receded, and the shake in my hand steadied, I had an epiphany. What if mobile phones were banned altogether? What if texting was outlawed? What if we were penalised, even jailed, for possession?

After all, the mobile phone is a symbol of the Celtic Tiger. It is a vehicle that propelled our brashness. It is part of the cultural cocktail of drugs that helped us lose our souls.