Wendyl Nissen: Lost in translation

Apparently, I was The Warehouse's first lost adult. Photo / Michael Bradley

I've had a huge reaction to the column I wrote announcing that I would be going on a month-long cellphone diet. The rules were simple, all I had to do was not use my cellphone for a month and I couldn't bludge texts or calls off friends.

It was, I believed (and hoped) at the time, the start of a revolution, a time when one by one people would join me and return to a more simple life involving house phones in the hallway perched on a delicate table with a dinky chair to sit on while you engaged in conversation without moving around.

Sadly, this has not come to pass. The "huge" reaction I refer to has been from my friends and family who have been so busy rolling their eyes that they can no longer look up without enduring the pain of severe eye strain.

"How long until you give this thing up?" shouted one friend, who was denied the chance to send her usual Sunday morning witty texts after reading the gossip pages.

"Why is this my problem?" moaned another friend. "I had to leave a message on your landline!" She said "landline" like she was referring to a landmine.

"I don't mean to be negative, but this is seriously pissing me off," said my husband after receiving his fifth call of the week from one of my friends passing on a message from me, to prevent me having to pick up a cellphone or find a landline to call him.

And my youngest daughter summed it up in one biting word: "Lame."

Which hurt. But not as much as being paged on the loudspeaker at The Warehouse. We were on a family shopping trip when my husband opted to dive into the DVD department looking for rare and ancient movie magic that will sit on our shelves unwatched for the next decade. Meanwhile, I had wandered off in the general direction of the gardening section.

What I found in there was so engrossing that time refused to have any meaning or consequence for me. I was transfixed by a middle-aged couple locked in the longest, deepest, tongue-divingly intense pash session. Right there, at The Warehouse, by the tomato plants. I found myself faking an intense interest in a feijoa bush so that I could get a better look. Not that I'm at all voyeuristic, but one needs to know certain information about middle-aged pashing couples at The Warehouse, such as what will happen when the pash ends? Rush to the car for more? Race home after a passionate and urgent drive? Dive behind the feijoa bush? As it turned out my pashing couple just stopped and wandered off to look at the weedkillers.

"Could Wendyl Nissen please join her husband and daughter at the information counter. Wendyl Nissen, if you are in the store your family are waiting for you."

I grabbed some basil and headed off.

"For God's sake I haven't been that long," I grumbled on seeing my husband and daughter deep in conversation with a woman in a red shirt who was relating tales of lost children in the store. Apparently I was her first lost adult.

"I don't mean to be negative," he said.

"Lame!" said my daughter.

Meanwhile, I have loved every minute of freedom my cellphone diet has given me. While my family have frantically searched for me on occasion, I have not sent one text, frantically searched at the bottom of my handbag only to find the phone as the call cut off, nor have I had my meals or quiet time interrupted.

"You have responsibilities," said my husband on the tense ride home.

"The only responsibility I see is being able to be found by you, and we could probably fix that by implanting a satellite navigation device in my right ear and hooking it up to a Sat Nav so that you can follow my every move," I replied.

I think he's considering it. Because I've now moved on to the maintenance part of my cellphone diet, which I like to call "cellphone-lite". It'll remain as a prepay mobile and I'll only use it in emergencies. Like being lost in translation at The Warehouse.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY