I just heard from my sister in the U.S. who wished me a Happy New Year. She told me that my soon-to-be 14-year-old nephew got a cell phone for Christmas. I am trying desperately to understand this.

To give you a little background, I worked for A.T. & T. when they unveiled this amazing technology. I can still remember the material the company put out about cellular phones. I was simply amazed. I remember thinking this invention could be a wonderful help for people.

The group of people I thought would benefit most were doctors. They could be called and would be able to give medical advice and instruction at a moments notice. The old way was inefficient and slow. Doctors had to answer a pager, get to phone, find change or fumble with a phone card (which was always expired), and then call the hospital. Meantime, Mrs. Johnson had to deliver her own baby because Dr. Abdul wasnt able to get off the Interstate to answer his page.

Now, doctors, the group which benefits from this Star Trek technology, can be called almost anywhere on the planet. Mrs. Johnson no longer has to have her babies by herself. Although other professions most certainly benefit from this wonderful advance in communications, it was the medical guys that first popped into my mind.

But, a 14-year-old boy? Cell phones for children? I find this idea almost impossible to grasp. I would love to tell you that giving cell phones to minor children is an idea limited to the decadently overindulged Americans and that Mexicans would NOT commit such a horror. But I would be lying. In this small, colonial Mexican town, where you simply could yell out the window if you needed to communicate (who needs phones, anyway?), Mexican parents buy their teenage (and younger) children cell phones.

Why? Why? Why? Someone tell me why!

So, in trying to figure this out, I want to run some reasons by you about why an almost 14-year-old child might need a cell phone.

The New World Order (a.k.a. King G. Bush the First) is run by immature and unthinking children who have formed a secret society called The Children and Crossbones. This has to be the case since no thinking, mature adult would have our country in the toilet that it is in now. The kids control everything and everyone. They have to have their cell phones to keep in close and intimate contact with whomever they need to direct.

Doctors are now graduating from Medical School at the age of 13 and have to have those unbearable cell phones to save their patients lives. They are the new generation of Dougie Howser, M.D.

Every child you see with a cell phoneand I mean every child without exceptionhas such personal family problems that a parent might have to call them at any moment and say, Quick, take a cab to the hospital! Granny is on her last leg!

The CIA (and right now, this might be the most believable of these options) is run by 13-year-olds. They have to call in their spying reports and could not do this without their wonderfully annoying cell phones.

All the 13-year-olds with cell phones are actually members of the American Press Corps (another possible idea considering the state of the American press) and have to have cell phones to call in their stories.

As much as I would like to believe one of these scenarios as a possibility, I am afraid the truth is that unthinking parents give their children cell phones as status symbols.

No child needs a cell phone! Not one!

Just like upper middle-class Americans think they need to drive huge, gas-guzzling SUVs because the Joness have one, they think their little Buffys and Chads need to have cell phones.

Because all their friends have cell phones, they have to have them too.