I bought a cell phone. I broke down, bit the bullet and laid out the cash.

I was sweating as I walked into the little kiosk. It was no-man's land. The place where children oft wander and grown men ne'er dare venture. Little blinking lights and screens with soft-inviting glows; a visual siren's call of sorts.

I could have sworn that "All hope abandon, ye who enter here" was engraved on the entrance.

I will maintain till this day that they tricked me. It was not my fault. Peer pressure, advertisements, psychobabble and subliminal messages. All of it. Virgin Mobile and those in vogue commercials were just too much. Nokia had video games! Verizon had Darth Vader for Christ's sake!

"What's your cell number, I'll call you," I'd be asked. And after the 30-second awkward pause, eventually I would have to commit the social sin of the highest degree and admit to not owning one.

I never wanted to be one of "those people." I didn't need a cell phone. I was entranced by the pace of life as it stood -- no fancy gadgetry needed. Every one of my friends had them. It was a plague. Walking down the street, I would be surrounded by a crowd of people all in different places mentally.

I purchased the "Nokeocera 5000+" from the man at the kiosk. He was a little shorter than I was -- black hair, with a handlebar mustache and a top hat, of all things.

He shook my hand and told me to call him S.W. I was suspicious, to say the least, but the damn phone came preprogrammed with the Knight Rider theme song for a ring tone -- where could I go wrong?

I bought the perfect decorative case (neon camouflage -- I'm a hip dude), the additional keyboard, stylus and ergonomic wrist strap.

The guy tried to sell me a so-called "death laser" attachment, but I'm no sucker. I respectfully declined.

It was only an extra $9 a month to get national service. I had always planned to take that road trip across the States, so I thought I better not skimp on the details. I got 200 any-time minutes, which I thought meant "any time you need to use them, you can."

I only later found out that those 200 minutes only apply from 9:13 a.m. to 7:06 p.m. I was a little angry about that, but it wasn't too bad because from midnight to 4 a.m., I got to use the phone any time I wanted to call anyone I wanted.

I was awake all night long anyway, so it didn't seem that bad of a deal.

I could send these little text message things with the keyboard I bought. Any three-word message I wanted could be sent to another Nokeocera phone for only 60 cents. A letter through the post office costs 37 cents and that doesn't even count the paper and ink and stuff.

Maybe this cell phone stuff wasn't all that terrible after all.

I could send stuff like "Meet me later," "Duke sucks huh," "Party now where," and "Hot girl whoa." The keyboard doesn't support punctuation yet, but S.W. promised it in version 3.0 of the software.

The phone had this really cool game where you moved a dot around the screen. I couldn't figure out how to win or what my score was -- but I'm pretty sure I was really good at it. I never needed extra lives.

I was officially a member of the wired community. I printed up little slips of paper with my "celly digits" on them and handed them out to everyone I knew. I made calls to New Mexico at 3 a.m. to order pizza ("haha the dude probably delivered it," "OMG WTF LOL").

I made sure to never use the phone until I was with other people, so that everyone knew I had other places to be and other people to talk to. I wasn't trying to be rude -- I was just trying to make a statement to the people I was around at the time. They should feel privileged just to be walking with me.

Then I got the bill.

I promptly tied the phone to a brick, lobbed it through the glass door of the shop I purchased it in, and realized that there are some things that I should never -- ever -- let myself succumb to.

I have an addictive personality; ignorant, impolite communication just wasn't for me. Unsocial tech toys are better left to the more mod of my generation. I need real people standing in front of me calling me an a-hole -- the text message thing just didn't have the kind of impact a societal leper like me requires.

So to tide me over until the whole cell phone fad is over with, I bought this Tamagotchi thing, and man, my little dinosaur -- "Allesaurus" -- is going to eat the crap out of every other little dinosaur out there.