Published: Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 11:15 p.m. MDT
By
Doug Robinson, Deseret News
It wasn't easy to reach The Last Man Not to Own a Cellphone.
For one thing, he doesn't own a cellphone.
I finally connected with him via a landline, the electronic version of smoke signals. Anyway, here he is, America — The Last Holdout.
His name is Bruce Wilson. He lives and works in Utah. Someday he will have a statue in the Smithsonian, and future generations will point and gawk. The plaque under his statue will read:
Bruce Wilson, the last man not to own a cellphone. Somehow he managed to survive 21st century life without it. His wife and three children owned cellphones; his peers at work all owned cellphones; his friends owned cellphones. But not Wilson, who stubbornly refused them to the end.
Wilson is a husband and father; he's well-read, smart, witty, goes to church on Sunday, holds down a good job. In short, he appears to be normal.
But he's not.
Wilson thinks people should talk face to face whenever possible.
What a weirdo.
How out of step is Wilson? He has never sent or received a text message. Wouldn't know how to do it if somehow offered him a free smartphone with unlimited minutes.
"I can't figure out why people text when they could just pick up phone," he says.
This guy is whacked.
Wilson is an international sales manger for Utah Medical Products. Wait, how could he hold a job like that without a cellphone, you're wondering? He must have to spend a lot of time on the phone.
"Whenever I tell my customers I don't have a cellphone, there is always this stunned silence," Wilson says. "I tell them they can get me during business hours at the office."
What a novel concept.
Wilson has been asked a thousand times, "What's your cell number?" And: "How can you exist without a cellphone?"
Answer: "I've done it for 57 years and it seems to be working OK."
Doesn't he know what he's missing? Doesn't he want to be available 24/7, on the freeway, in church, in the bathroom, at dinner, in a movie theater, at the gym? Doesn't he want to join the rest of us? Doesn't he feel like he's missing out?
No.
"I'm holding out as long as I can," he says.
He's observed cellphone users and, frankly, they don't exactly invite emulation. The other day he was driving down the road when he noticed a man in a pickup truck next to him smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee, reading a full-size blueprint, talking on his cellphone and driving the truck all at the same time.
"My thought was, we need to thin the herd," says Wilson.
He was seated in an airport lounge one day while a woman stood next to him yammering away on her cellphone about her friend's poor taste in house decor. As they began to board the airplane, the woman walked next to Wilson, still yapping. As fate would have it, she was assigned to sit in the seat next to Wilson.
Mercifully, a flight attendant asked Cellphone Woman to trade seats with another woman who was holding an infant. "It was the only time I ever wanted to sit next to a screaming baby," says Wilson.
On another occasion, while watching a movie in a theater, he heard a man behind him repeating the dialogue – line for line – on a cellphone.
Why would he want to be like these people?
During his drive to work each morning at 6:30, he sees kids waiting for their bus while talking on cellphones. "Who are they talking to at 6:30!?" Wilson says. "I don't want to talk to anybody at 6:30!"
Wilson has a few questions of his own for Cellphone People: "Why do they yell when they're on the cellphone? Isn't (talking) what the cellphone is for?"
He was in a restaurant once when a lady in the next booth was talking so loud on her cellphone that he could hear her reading the entire menu, prices included.
"I've been in a sauna at the gym where people were yelling into their cellphones and texting," says Wilson. "I've even seen a guy running laps and talking on his cellphone. Unless you're a neurosurgeon, do you really need to be talking on the phone while you're running?"
He thinks about this a moment before concluding, "I'd rather drink my own bath water."
And so he won't be getting a cellphone any time soon. "Now it's almost a matter of principle," he says.
