The fiancee and I went to see The Dark Knight in IMAX on Monday night. 9:15PM show and it was a sell-out crowd. Great movie, by the way. Recommend you go, and see it in IMAX if at all possible. Anyway, the movie gets done, the credits start to roll, and, I swear, at least one hundred people immediately flipped open their cell phones as one to see who might have possibly tried to call them or text them during the two hours when they were—gasp!—not reachable by cell phone!

What is this? Are you all doctors on call? Do you have some huge business deal pending at midnight on a Monday? Expecting a call from your lawyer about that escrow account closing? Folks, you don’t need to be in constant contact with each other twenty-four hours a day, especially for the kind of insipid, banal crap most of you seem to be talking about when you take these all-important phone calls while seated next to me in a restaurant. Honestly, are you that starved for attention and contact that you simply must check your cell phone anytime you have to go more than five minutes without being able to answer it?

In fact, you know what? Got a challenge for you cell-phone addicts. For one day, one twenty-four-hour period, turn off your cell phones. Just shut them off. Toss them in a drawer. Leave them at home. No calls. No texts. No email. If you want to be really crazy, the next day, erase all your waiting voice and text messages without listening to or reading them. Just go for twenty-four hours without being reachable at every waking moment for your friends to let you know whatever insignificant thought just crossed their minds.

Call me up and let me know how it goes.