A few days ago, I almost got run over in Walmart by a shopping cart. It’s illegal in Florida now to hold a cellphone while driving a vehicle. The law should include anything on wheels. And anyone walking on public property.

I. Do. Not. Get it. What in God’s name does everyone find so damned fascinating about this little rectangular gadget? It’s a freaking obsession that’s swept over the planet. I can’t decide which is worse: the phone phenomenon or the pet passion.

At a dance/jazz joint hours after the Walmart episode, I almost tripped on one of those little yappers – a Pomeranian or shih tzu or Chihuahua, I don’t know – that a patron brought to the bar. He left it on the floor by the stool, where it thankfully did not yap – or worse, if you know what I mean (rhymes with yap).

In my condo complex, it appears rules regarding pets don’t exist. German shepherds tug at their owners’ leashes with the same urgency (and more success) as those of diminutive breed. The owners don’t even carry plastic bags to gather their pets’ deposits, which, mercifully, are left on grassy areas; that apparently is a rule. But woe betide the person who strays from the gray to the green, which likely is mined with substances hazardous to hiser (his or her) footwear, not to mention said pedestrian’s olfactory sensibilities.

I have a theory. The pet craze and cellphone addiction emerged simultaneously, if my sense of time is correct. What would cause that? Pets, especially dogs, are wholly subservient to their owners. They don’t argue, or pout, or question their masters’ character or actions or motives. They love unconditionally. A relationship with a dog is so much easier than one with a judgmental human.

So what does that have to do with cellphones? They offer a degree of anonymity, communication from a distance, without personal contact. Texting is so much easier than talking, especially in-person conversation. Texting is limited in what can be said, so there is little opportunity to relate on a level deeper than the surface, the inane.

Of course, texting isn’t all that’s done on the cellphone. Social media interaction is another indulgence, especially among young people, some of whom use this vehicle in cruel fashion, ganging up on certain of their peers so abusively that instances of suicide have occurred around the country. Many teachers have complained that cellphone use interferes with students’ classwork. Here in Florida, the Legislature passed a bill last July that prohibits use of cellphones in classrooms, the only beneficial legislation by the Republican-dominated body that I can recall.

Okay, so that’s a layman’s lame assessment, a generalization that doesn’t account for extraneous factors, such as the convenience offered by texting. Let’s ponder the related subject of the respective attributes and liabilities of the cellphone versus the home phone, also called landline.

A few months ago, a man who described himself in an article in Forbes as “an engineer who has worked on everything from spectrophotometers to satellites” wrote in praise of the landline. With extensions throughout the house, you don’t need to be in constant possession of your cellphone. And you don’t have to worry about a dead battery. Further, the landline is much better designed, with the receiver near the ear and the microphone near the mouth.

“By contrast,” he writes, “smartphones sacrifice comfort, audio quality and usability in order to be ‘all-in-one’ devices that fit into pockets and purses. A small, thin rectangle with a touchscreen is an ergonomic mess as a phone.” He goes on to disparage reception problems, the delay in hearing a caller’s speech, and the interruptions that are more frequent with cellphones because of their ubiquity.

I would add cellphone liabilities that I find even more irksome. 1) When you make a call, you often have to choose from a menu, requiring you to go to another page for the keypad. Meanwhile, the phone goes dark, and you have to push the side button to turn the light back on. 2) For a landline, you pay a fixed monthly fee, while cellphone costs increase with increased usage. And cellphones cost more than landline phones. 3) You don’t have to continually charge a landline as you do a cellphone, with the worry that if you forget, you’re out of access until the thing is charged back up. 4) If you need your hands free while talking, it’s easy with a landline phone. You can type on your computer while talking. It’s harder to hold a cellphone on your ear.

Of course, the cellphone is a great way to communicate away from home. But you don’t need a smartphone for that. The original flip phone works fine. A high school principal in Chicago got rid of his smartphone in favor of a flip phone, and reported a feeling of freedom. He banned all phones from students while in school.

Smartphones have largely replaced newspapers and magazines. Walk into almost any doctor’s or dentist’s office waiting room, and what do you see? Patients scattered through the room, most engaged in either of two nearly synonymous activities: staring into space or into their cellphones. Remember the days when waiting rooms were stocked with magazines? I know; it requires a good long-term memory.

Yet the area of Florida where I moved to in September, Tampa Bay, is privileged to have the No. 1 or 2 newspaper in the state, the Tampa Bay Times, among the leading papers in the country. It has won 14 Pulitzer Prizes since 1964 and operates PolitiFact, its lauded investigative arm, which probes claims made by politicians for their veracity. How many people care? So few that the Times had to cut its print paper to Wednesdays and Sundays four years ago. Most people would rather get their alleged news from the Fox television channel.

Traffic in the region is horrendous, exacerbated, in my opinion, by the inordinately long intervals between stop light changes. Vehicles in some times and places back up for blocks before the light turns green. A lot of people spend their waiting time delving into – you guessed it – their smartphones. I have a different solution: Making sure I’m behind another vehicle in the lane, so its movement will alert me to the light change, I read my Times. I have the satisfaction of knowing I’m not disobeying the law, as are the phone addicts.

Lest you think I’m simply a technophobe – which, I suppose, I am in large measure – I’m on my desktop computer all day. One day, I suppose, I’ll have to succumb and join the madding crowd – in order to survive. Just not quite yet, thank you.