I think my cell phone needs a timeout.

I got my bill a few days ago, and got a little upset. Not upset enough to pick up my phone, heave it out the window and watch it shatter into a million pieces with some kind of sadistic satisfaction, but the idea of throwing it out said window entered my mind and settled there for a few seconds before I discarded it.

I eventually realized that the effects of such a rash move would be counter productive, since it would cost more for me to replace the offending electronic, and a timeout would be a much cheaper alternative.

While cursing Verizon for banking on my tendency to yammer away on my phone for hours, I thought about an experiment my Christian Ethics professor suggested to our class – to take away our cell phones for a weekend and see how emotionally unstable we would become. He realized that this was not a live option because, as for most of us, our cell phone is not simply a portable telephone. Oh no, it is much more than that.

It is our only reliable method of communication with our friends and family. (I say reliable with a grain of salt, as Cingular customers have recently learned the hard way with an utter breakdown of service.)

It functions as our alarm clock, our wristwatch, our address book, our calendar and even our camera. Merely a telephone? What year do you think this is, 2000? Let’s be serious. Maybe emotional breakdown is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m pretty sure most of us would suffer some kind of withdrawal.

But after a few minutes of damning Verizon to hell for their text messaging fees and peak hours, I began to seriously consider my professor’s suggestion. Really, what would I miss out on by throwing my phone out the window for a few days?

I would be late to class every day, because my cell phone is my alarm clock and my only method of telling time. So I would fail out of school.

My family, friends and long-distance boyfriend wouldn’t be able to talk to me and would instead rely on e-mail, which I check every other day or so because I don’t have a reliable Internet connection. So they might not like that very much.

If I got hit by a car, I couldn’t call 911 unless I found a pay phone, and I don’t think they exist anymore. So I would die. If I got drunk and abandoned at a bar, I couldn’t call a cab. So I would try to walk home and get mugged or possibly shot … and again, I might die.

I don’t really want to die. I’d rather not flunk out of school. And I’d prefer to keep my relationships with friends and family intact. So it looks like my cell phone is here to stay.

But I still curse Verizon.