On the Bus from Boston

So, while I was getting on the bus from Boston (where we spent a wonderful Thanksgiving) to New York, I heard this man say something on his phone that I keep remembering. I love hearing other people's conversations. One of the many cool things about public transportation is the fact that it allows you to hear other people conversations. Nosey people like me can satisfy their nosiness without having to figure out the complicated procedure of wiretapping.

Anyway, so this man said, "I'm on my way to New York, and I'm going to turn my cell phone off because I just read an article about cell phones causing skin cancer, so I'll call you in about five hours." He's not the first person I've encountered who is concerned about their cell phone signals doing bad things to them. I just thought his response to this information was weird.

Let's say you discovered that cell phones caused skin cancer, no question about it. Would you immediately call your friend--on your cell phone--and tell him that you were going to turn your phone off for a few hours? No, because it wouldn't do any good. If your cell phone caused cancer in Boston, it will still cause cancer on the bus ride away from Boston. You can't reduce it's cancer-causing properties by turning it off for five hours as if you were preserving the battery. It would make more sense to find a pay phone, call your friend on a land line, and tell him that he can no longer reach you on your cell phone because you threw it in the Charles River.

Then, as I was pushing my stroller this morning, I thought, maybe this man didn't actually believe that his cell phone caused him cancer. Maybe, the article had made him a little nervous, and he needed some time away from his phone to forget about the article. It makes the man seem kind of overly sensitive to his own feelings, but it makes more sense than turning a phone off on the bus because you think that the phone will give you cancer during those four hours.

It would be like me calling Husband and saying "Hi, I'm taking a taxi home instead of a bus because I just watched 'Speed.'" Now, I don't actually think that the bus I ride home will have a hidden bomb inside it, but, you know, why worry about it? Why spend the bus ride picturing my broken body tumbling across the pavement amid burning seat cushions and twisted steel? Take the taxi and save the bus for a time when I'm not thinking about bus bombs.

Because I do not like to feel nervous, I choose to avoid horror movies where bad things happen to nice people like me. Because I do not like to feel nervous--and I would be lost, naked, lonely, and powerless without my cell phone--I choose not to look for any articles linking cell phones to skin cancer.