I remember a number of years ago (ten at least) when I was an out-of-work bum, living in my friend's basement, wondering what I was going to do for a career after a crumbling partnership led to the failure of a modestly profitable repair/retail business. I got a call from a computer geek friend who owned a small cellular phone business, and asked me if I wanted to be a sales representative for a new company called Clearnet, which sold Motorola phones with the Mike two-way radio network. Of course, this was way before cell phone ringtones and Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi and all that other neat stuff.

I jumped at the idea, mostly because I had nothing else better to do, and I was keen on the idea of having my own Motorola flip phone, even if there was only nine different built-in ringtones--which was a heckuva lot back then, not like the vast ocean of Motorola ringtones that are available today. The key selling feature of the Mike phone was that you could talk to someone without dialing them in "traditional" telephone format. You just push a button and say "hey Bob, it's me Daryl." or "breaker, breaker. What's your 10-20 gooood buddddddy?". Now, I'm all for informality when it comes to calling someone, especially someone close who doesn't want to go through all the blather every time you call--several times a day. You could waste a lot of cellular airtime just going through the formalities of saying "hello", "how are you?", and "Yes I know it's after midnight. Am I calling you at a bad time?". With the Mike phone, you could just blurt out whatever was on your mind, without caring who could hear you on the other end. You could open up and tell Bob about the physical features of the attractive girl at the coffee shop, or what you really felt about your boss (in this case, it was Bob), and they (and everyone else in the meeting) had to listen to it.

Now, I was a fairly lousy sales rep, mostly because I hated selling stuff (including phones) to people who didn't need them, and so my career at Clearnet was short, although I learned a fair bit about telephony, and used that to move on to digital phone system installations at hospitals and banks. I didn't get to keep my Motorola Mike phone for very long, and truthfully, I didn't care. I'm not sure how well the Mike network is doing these days. I'm sure that there are devotees who love interrupting meetings by blurting out random things like "Bob, your sister smells like cheese". As for me, I've got a pretty cool cell phone that plays the Crazy Frog every time my wife calls, and some other funny voice ringtones for those special friends. I don't regret losing my career in mobile telephony, but I just wonder if I would've been able to sell more Mike phones if they had invented that annoying little frog back in the 1990's. I might've bought one.