Which JOE SULLIVAN are you trying to call? SORRY. Wrong number.

A new telephone book arrived last week.

If you got your new directory, I'll bet you did the same thing I did: You looked up your own listing.

It would take an expert in human behavior to explain why, exactly, we do that. My home phone number hasn't changed. My name hasn't changed. My address hasn't changed. Still, I look at the new phone book just to be sure.

The new book of phone numbers is changing. As widely reported -- including a front-page story in Wednesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- more and more of us are giving up our wired home telephones and relying on our cell phones.

It makes sense. Cell phones have taken over our culture. There's another behavior I wish some expert could explain.

For the life of me I can't figure out why so many cell-phone users feel compelled to use their cell phones all the time. Are they trying to get their money's worth by wringing every available minute out of their cell-phone contract? Do they really need to know what everyone else in their world is doing every minute?

I go to the grocery store. I am the only shopper pushing a cart who isn't talking on a cell phone. Occasionally, I phone my wife, who is responsible for the grocery list, to decipher her handwriting or to make sure we have something that isn't on the list or to discuss alternatives to items I can't find.

But I never call anyone -- ever -- on my cell phone and start the conversation by saying, "What are you doing?"

That has become the standard cell-phone greeting, as far as I can tell. When I see someone answer a cell phone, the first words I hear are these: "Oh, nothing. I'm just shopping at the grocery store."

Whoop-de-doo!

Many cell-phone users use Bluetooth earphones so you don't even know they are on the phone. They walk up behind you and start talking. Out of politeness you turn to acknowledge what appears to be the start of an unexpected conversation. As soon as you make eye contact or say anything, you are rewarded with a scowl.

Sorry. I thought you were talking to me. Now I have to decide if you're on the phone or just plain nuts.

I'm not against cell phones. I have one. I like having it with me for those rare occasions when I need to give or receive information and I'm not near my home phone or my work phone. But I could count the cell-phone minutes I use in a week's time on my fingers with some help from my toes on a busy week.

Cell-phone retailers love to sell me new phones, but they struggle a bit finding a service plan suitable for the minutes I use. I even had one pleasant salesman suggest: "Do you really need a cell phone?"

Ah. Now we are into the meat of the matter.

As it turns out, I do not need a cell phone. I want a cell phone.

There's a big difference. And, from my own observations, it appears few cell-phone users need one.

Tuesday night we were at the River Campus symphony and chorale concert. The college-age woman sitting on my right appeared to be checking her phone every few seconds. As it turns out, she wasn't talking on it, or texting. She was using the light from the phone's screen to see what she was writing on a notepad. I couldn't determine if she was doing an assignment or taking notes or writing poetry. The concert lasted two hours. I have to give credit to whatever brand of phone she was using. The battery lasted the entire concert.

If most of us want a cell phone, the trend is that more and more of us don't think we need a home phone. Which brings us back to the new phone directory.

For generations the phone book has been more than a way to find someone's phone number. It has been a guide to addresses and, more recently, postal ZIP codes.

Phone customers have long had the option of having a phone without having a listing in the directory. An even more recent trend is to have your address removed from your phone listing. In this age of ultraprivacy, there are people who want us to know their phone number but not where they live.

Now phone users who are opting for cell phones over land lines are disappearing from the phone book. Cell-phone numbers aren't listed. Nor are cell-phone numbers used for telemarketing are political calls.

Will that change?

Cell-phone providers have been trying to get a 411 directory service for cell numbers established that would require customers to choose to be listed. However, those numbers wouldn't be printed in phone books. Yet.

There are some online sites that look up public records, including cell-phone numbers, of any individual you name, but they charge for access to the records. I'm too stingy to pay to see how accurate or reliable these services are.

This shift to cell phones and no listing in phone books presents an interesting situation. As I have already observed, most folks with cell phones want to be talking on them all the time, but apparently only to a hand-picked group with whom they are willing to share their cell numbers. Makes you wonder if there might be a money-making opportunity in selling batches of cell numbers of people you don't know just so you can have a fresh conversation now and then.

I'll be hanging on to my home phone for now. I like knowing it's there in an emergency. When I dial 911, the person on the other end of the line knows who and where I am. Finding me if I call on my cell phone is a bit more dicey.

My wife and I enjoy being able to talk to our sons at the same time. We would have to use our cell phone's speaker to do that. And we enjoy being able to use our home phone to call the power company when the electricity goes out. Never mind that AmerenUE's computer already knows I'm in the dark. There's something comforting about confirming it on the phone.

And I like being able to check the new phone book to see that I'm still ... here.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editorial page editor of the Southeast Missourian. E-mail: jsullivan@semissourian.com.