Cell Phone Ringtones

Right now, mine is a woman singing “can you hear me when I sayyyyy…I’m waiiiiting….can you answer myyyy call?” Pause. “Can you hear me when I sayyyyyy…I’m waaaiting….can you answer my call?”

“What the hell is that?” people respond when they hear my cell phone ring.

Most ring tones I’ve heard in life attempt to recreate a song, or a soothing natural sound, or, maybe, an older kind of phone. I appreciate a cell phone ring tone that attempts to speak through the caller, to me.

Our cab driver, Sukwini, has a cell phone ring that sounds, at first, like a baby crying, and then the baby’s cry turns into a song. For the first 1.2 milliseconds of the cell phone ring, everyone in the cab thinks that a crying baby somehow appeared in the passenger seat, and we all must have just missed it when we first stepped in the door. Then, the look of surprise morphs into realization of the cell phone, which morphs into a judgement about the cell phone ring tone. Some are disturbed, others, amused.

Most people just say “what the fuck?”