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The Ties That Bind

Jan 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18 • By DAVID SKINNER
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I am not a free man. I have kids, a wife, a job. I am, as they say, tied down. This means that no matter where I go, I remain tethered by invisible strings of love and obligation to people who depend on me—and on whom I depend.

The Ties That Bind

But for a couple of hours a day I slip the knots. I do so by simply leaving my house or my office and taking with me no communications devices—because I don’t own any.

That’s right, I don’t own a cell phone. Go ahead, laugh. There’s something funny about it, like a character in a Jules Feiffer play who admits, with an embarrassed catch in his voice, “I’ve never been to Europe.”

The decision to do without was easy for me. I was not a phone person to begin with, and the little spare money I had when cell phones first became popular I preferred to spend on beer. Also this: In my life people never said things like, “Can you believe what just happened? We’ve got to talk to Dave, stat!”

These days I find beer more affordable, though I still tend to be frugal. And the number of people who might ever call me with an urgent matter has ticked up slightly, from zero to maybe two. Yet I continue resisting the siren call of monthly charges and personalized ring tones.

When pressed, I can always borrow a cell phone of my wife’s—for some reason, she has several. A couple of years ago I was planning a short business trip with a new colleague, who looked dumbfounded when I told him I didn’t have a cell phone. “Can you borrow one?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. Waiting for me at the airport, he called to ask where I was. “I’m right over here,” I said, my voice carrying naturally to his ears because I had already seen him and was only 20 feet away.

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