A Little Rant

You know that advertisement when people do stupid things while talking on their cell phone and their neighbor turns to them and says, "REALLY?" Well, that's how Martin felt last night when he went to a memorial service for a student who was recently killed in a traffic accident and sat next to a guy who texted and browsed the internet on his cell phone. REALLY? You'd think at least death would have coaxed that fellow to put away his technology.

Since Martin and I turned in our cell phones more than seven years ago, we've "outside" the cell phone culture, and the cell phone now astonishes us. Increasingly it takes people away from each other's very real presence--I've been on a walk with someone in a beautiful place when they picked up a call and chatted to a person hundreds of miles away--for a good part of our stroll. It didn't make any sense to me--I felt increasingly invisible even though I was present in the flesh, and the person on the other end of the call--an important person but not THERE--received all the attention of my walking partner. Same thing while riding in a car, which I see as a great social interaction UNLESS the person in the passenger seat is locked into a conversation with someone in California. OR. . .wait for it. . .you're sitting with people you love in your kitchen or living room and a person you love becomes so wrapped up in her internet browser on her cell phone that, when you finally leave, she barely glances up at you. Cell phones: possibly ending real community everywhere.

Mind you, most people I know well don't engage in bad cell phone behavior, but occasionally my jaw drops, like Martin's seatmate last night. And before I go all Wendell Barryish on all of you and engage in more badly written arguments about nameless people, I'll close with a weather report.

Sunny, sunny, sunny. I feel like hauling the rugs outside and beating out all the winter doldrums.

I can't resist one last comment. In all honesty, I enjoyed my mother's cell phone usage yesterday when I was able to chat with her as she shopped in Washington State. . .I would have much rather been next to her, digging through scarves, but chatting on and on was the next best thing. And am I not depriving my children of my full attention now by typing out this silly blog entry? In all honesty, I don't think they're missing me at the moment, but in interest of full disclosure, there it is.