I am not a cell phone guy

My friend Nate has a theory about generations. At age 30-something, he contends that those who are part of his generation have seen the movie "Tron." Those punk kids with their ironic haircuts and Fall Out Boy music have not seen "Tron."

I am part of the "Tron" generation. I am also part of the "this dang cell phone" generation.

My first cell phone came in college, at the behest of my parents, who desperately wanted me to have some means of contacting the police while I was delivering pizza. It was a piece of crap and, true to form, I have been getting the same piece of crap phone ever since.

I am probably on my fourth phone now and this is the first time I've ever spent any money on it rather than just taking whatever they were offering for free.

Gone is the candy-bar phone with the big buttons and a screen that could be called "color" only if you felt generous about gray-blue, gray-green and gray-red.

My new phone slides open -- Oooh, fancy! -- and it plays music. It even hooks up to my computer so I can add songs without paying $17 a piece to download them.

It is the first phone I've ever owned with a camera. It seems like camera phones have been the norm forever, but I just never cared. This one is grainy at best. The pictures I've taken so far are exactly the kind you'd expect from a professional writer.

Sure, I've admired the nice phones before. I cannot lie -- the prospect of an iPhone very nearly had me sticking with AT&T -- but while others get new phones every few months, I am ready to spend the next two years finding reasons to hate what I've got.

Now my biggest challenge -- choosing icons for "My Faves." I know...it is very gay, but that's the name of the plan. If it was cheap enough, got decent reception and included free nights and weekends, I'd gladly sign up for a plan called "Two Guys Fellating Each Other While Wearing Pink Leather Jumpsuits."

It's also the first time I switched phone companies, at least voluntarily. We signed up for AT&T forever ago and were somehow switched to Alltel. When that contract ended, we went to Cingular, which promptly became AT&T again.

Now we're a T-Mobile family, which is good for the placing and receiving phone calls bit, but it sucks because everybody else I know has AT&T. Worst case scenario, though -- maybe I'll just hear from people less.