Columnist Susan Snyder: We need to clear the air of cell phones

Monday, Dec. 20, 2004 | 8:25 a.m.

It's as if beige food and the pre-board body cavity searches aren't bad enough.

Federal officials now are considering whether people should be allowed to talk on their cell phones while in flight on commercial airlines.

Let me assist with the finer points of this dilemma:

No.

When my 20-year-old nephew was about 8, I gave him a Ren doll just before he boarded an airplane for a trip to see his mother. For those unfamiliar with the flatulent cartoon character genre, Ren was the rat half of the "Ren & Stimpy" rat-dog duo, which had a show on Nickelodeon.

(Oh, stop. Watching "Survivor XVII: The Canadian Outback" does not exactly make you a Yalie.)

True to his television persona, when one squeezed Ren's tummy Ren emitted the one noise sure to launch 8-year-old boys into fits of giggles.

So I gave this precious, precocious chestnut-eyed child strict instructions to avoid making Ren "speak" while on the airplane. Expecting him to follow them, of course, was futile -- as futile as it will be to expect some self-important blowhard to keep his personal calls to himself while cruising at 35,000 feet.

Consider his conversation an hour into a cross-country flight with full bar service:

"Hey, Sparky! Where d'ya think I am now?! We're flyin' over the Grand (expletive) Canyon! Yeah! No (expletive)! It's right down there! Man, that's a big (expletive) hole! I'll call again when I get to Vegas!"

Excuse me Sir, are you going to eat that bag of pretzels? If not, may I suggest SHOVING IT DOWN YOUR THROAT UNTIL THE NOISE STOPS?

I figure if we can make people wait three hours to smoke a cigarette, we can make them wait that long to have conversations such as:

"I miss you already. Do you miss me? You do? Well, I bet I miss you more. ... No, I miss you more. ... No, I miss YOU more ..."

And I'll miss you both when I am sitting in federal prison because I committed a felony on a commercial airline.

Of course, there are people who absolutely, positively must be able to place and accept phone calls no matter where they are. But we already have an airplane for them.

It's called Air Force One.

"The ability to communicate is a vital one, but good cell phone etiquette is also essential," Jonathan Adelstein, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, said in an Associated Press report last week.

Thank you, Pollyanna.

Most Americans think "good etiquette" means not giving a guy the finger when he cuts you off as you illegally drive five blocks in the breakdown lane.

I am thinking the cell-chatting woman who raked through the clearance rack at Ross last spring while giving candid details of her sister's hysterectomy will have difficulty with defining "vital" conversations and said "good etiquette."

"Yo dude! you should see the clouds from up here! They're so (expletive) cool!"

Those who can't leave the phone off for a couple of hours, should go Greyhound.

Can you hear me now?