Life is always an adventure. I went on an entire odyssey just to mail a few packages, and came back moved to rant just a small rant.
It isn’t very far across our little town, a matter of 3 or 4 miles. If I lived in Amsterdam I would take my stuff to the post office on my bike, but if I lived there my bike would probably be equipped with a basket and there would probably be bike lanes. So I took the truck, which is what I get to use for errands while Jim uses the Prius to commute the 35 miles to his job.
I was nearly rear-ended at a stop light by a little blonde in an SUV who was involved in looking at her email on her phone. In the next half kilometer I was also almost sideswiped by a gentleman in a very old boat car who was sailing it out of a parking lot while engaged in a lively discussion with his BluTooth. At the stop light I watched the lady next to me unconsciously creep forward as her foot left the brake pedal while she was laughing and gesturing with her cigarette while talking on her cell phone, which she had cradled in her ear. She regained consciousness of her surroundings about a second before her bumper kissed the rear end of the truck in front of her at the red light, and was able to arrest her progress. Good thing the light changed before her foot lifted again.
This cell phone stuff is getting ridiculous.
I know it is terribly convenient to be able to do absolutely everything on one small piece of electronics. And I have to admit that I am enjoying the photos my niece is posting of Europe while she is still there via the beauty of the internet. But what I am witnessing as a cell phone non-user is that suddenly I have become an inhabitant of a world where people voluntarily isolate themselves. They may be sitting at the same table with the ostensible purpose of eating breakfast together, but they might as well be in separate houses for the amount of communicating they are doing with each other and any other person in the room.
I see people who have absolutely no qualms about driving around while they are talking on their telephones. Some people have learned that holding a phone to your ear is dangerous, in fact even illegal in many places. “I have a hands free device,” they cheerfully inform me, as if this makes up for the inherent snag in telephonic communication. It doesn’t matter whether your phone is wired to the wall or imbedded in your cerebral cortex (which seems to be the next logical step in the miniaturization of telephones), if you are talking on the phone to another person, you project your “self” to where they are. That self is no longer present in the place where your body is, your mind is taking you to the other person’s room and presence. It is probably even envisioning them, the room they are in. It takes a huge act of will to take your consciousness from that conversation and focus it on the traffic around you if you happen to be driving. I’m sorry to tell you that the hands free device does not cure this ill. Your mind still wanders.
Lets not even talk about how rude it is to be having a lunch date with someone and have them answer their phone. I almost walked out of lunch with my girlfriend when she did that to me. I could not believe it, I thought we were trying to get caught up with our lives. And what was I supposed to do while she chatted with the other party? Oh, I suppose I could have posted a status on Facebook or tweeted — if I had had my cell phone with me, which I did not. Besides, adding my own rudeness to the situation was going to make it any less rude, was it?
Your mind wanders if you are talking to a person in the car with you too. That is the genesis of the laws forbidding young teenage drivers to have more than one passenger in the car with them. I’ll just add that if you are looking at the radio trying to pick a station, you are not looking at the road, nor are you if you are applying makeup or reading the newspaper. Sorry, peripheral vision doesn’t cut it.
The post office was an adventure too. I was mailing a foreign package and I didn’t know which customs declarations form I was going to need for the item I was sending, so I filled them both out. The Post Office employee found that amusing. I had lots of time in line to fill them both out. I am not the only person who missed the Christmas rush to mail packages by waiting until after the New Year. Apparently there are quite a number of us.
While I was doing that I started thinking about how amazing it is that I can go to one building and give the guy my package with an address from the other side of an ocean on it and some money, and it will be there sometime next week. Probably it will reach its destination before the other packages that I sent parcel post because they were so darned heavy, which are not leaving the continental United States.
I mean, just a few generations ago you would have had to contract with a private party travelling across the country to get your package to the coast, and then trust that person to make arrangements with a ship that was travelling across the ocean where perhaps another person might deign to take your package to the person you addressed it to. I mean, Post Office, UPS, FedEX — all those guys. It is totally amazing.
And cell phones are amazing too. I just think maybe people should hang them up once in a while and look around at the world and see what has happened while you were gazing into your little box, flicking icons by, reading emails and newsfeeds, typg cht msgs tu ur bffs, and talking to them too, of course.
It might surprise you.
the havens 
You hit on one of my pet peeves, people talking or texting on their phones while driving. It is my contention that most people on the roads barely know how to drive even when they focus 100% of their attention on the task, which it seems most of them do not often do.
As part of the profession that helped the world to first become ‘connected’ (IT), since retiring I have chosen to stay rather loosely connected – no twitter or Facebook for me. My wife and I have prepaid cell phones, which we mostly use to call each other while out on errands.
I’d rather be gardening, or reading a book. Or talking to someone who’s not talking or texting on their cell phone.
Amen! to the gardening, reading and talking. Or playing a game with each other, where the game is actually on the table and you can talk to each other while you play. Rather than getting sucked into a computer game where you are interacting with the box rather than another human being.
I wonder what the future is going to be like.
We have one prepaid cell phone which we use exclusively when running on errands, and not that often then.
Happy New Year
Here in Wales/UK it is an offence to use mobile phones while driving. Due to this we do not see that many people disobeying the law.
Too much use for the mobile phones these days. They shouild only be used for emergencies.
Mary
It is an offense here too, but someone has to catch you. . .
saw a couple walking along, holding hands in the middle, yapping on their respective cell phones with the free hand… made me laugh out loud! but hey, at least they were touching each other!
My pet peeve is people who don’t turn their phone off when they’re in a cinema or at a concert…..
Honestly, I don’t understand why anyone forgets this elementary courtesy. Why are you at the cinema or a concert if you are wanting to talk on the phone, anyway?
I like the sound of:
“That is the genesis of the laws forbidding young teenage drivers to have more than one passenger in the car with them.”
We could do with that one!
That one really helps. Groups of kids larger than two tend to get rowdy and distract the driver. They also tend to ignore their seat belts, which makes the ensuing wreck more likely to be fatal.
I agree, and it’s all probably going to get worse. Kids see their parents doing it and they behave the same way. We need cell-phone etiquette classes – quick!
We need to be raising children who are not completely self-centered, and who seem to need to be stimulated from outside 100% of the time in order to avoid the fatal condition known as “being bored”.
All problems would be solved if people treated cell phones like they did phones with cords — leave them at home. Oops? Did I just fart in church?
Seeing people talking on their mobiles while driving scares the beejesus out of me, frankly. It is just asking for an accident – although, really, one couldn’t call it an accident since the consequences of such folly are so abundantly clear and statistically likely to happen.
And anyone who answers their phone while at dinner with me (I make an exception only for those people whose jobs entail their being ‘on call’, such as doctors and police officers) will get short shrift. I consider it the very nadir of discourtesy and will happily tell them so.
I take my iPhone to breakfast, but only get it out when I’m alone and only to read the news, it being much easier to handle while eating than a broadsheet newspaper.
I believe the rules about phones are entirely different when you are by yourself. I have no problem with people quietly using them when they are solo, they are not bothering anyone.
Talking at long loud length is another thing entirely.