I was in the very center seat on a minivan, speeding through the stomach-dropping, rollercoaster hills of Phonsavan, Laos. There were 15 of us, not including the driver, stacked up and folded against each other like magazines on a rack.
Behind me, a phone rang. Then it echoed.
It was definitely not the sound of a cell phone.
My friend Nick craned his neck to find the source of the noise. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
I turned around and saw a phone inside a pizza box. Except I don’t think it was really a pizza box, because I’m fairly certain they don’t have pizza boxes in Phonsavan, Laos. That’s not the point.
The point is that there was a BOX. With a PHONE. In a man’s LAP.
He answered the phone, of course.
I’m not sure what the man said next because he was speaking in Lao, but I think it was the Laotian equivalent of “It’s for you.” Then he passed the box phone to a lady sitting in front of him.
She rested the box on her lap, hit the speaker button and had a very loud, very enthusiastic conversation for about 15 minutes.
- Seriously.
I laughed so hard, I wept for the remainder of the ride.
I laughed because it was so clever.
I laughed because this unwieldy contraption was giving the middle finger to a world of tiny, portable cellular devices.
I laughed because, man, it was a freaking ringing phone in a freaking box. Tell me the last time you saw that.
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