Verbal Abuse
This
essay appeared online October- December 2005 in
New Works Review.
Yes, I can hear you
now. Unfortunately, we can all hear you now. More annoying than a
screaming toddler in a crowded airplane, more vexing than the
thumping bass of a teenager’s car at a red light, more rude than
barking dogs at 3 AM—it’s a stranger’s cell phone.
And not just the
ring of it, the song of it, the beep and buzz of it. It’s not even
the dangling cord of the headset, the glow in the dark,
tiger-striped faceplate, the special belt clip and purse
compartment, or the web browser, text-messaging, busy, busy,
constantly-connected wrongness of it that bugs me so much. It’s the
conversation that comes with it. The we-can-all-hear-you-now part of
the cellular phone.
When we don’t like a
TV commercial, we can mute it. When we don’t want to deal with
cigarettes, we can sit in non-smoking. When we don’t like the song
on the radio we’ll change the station. But what can we do when you
get on your phone behind us in the check-out line, or next to us in
the bathroom stall? There is no mute button and sometimes, we can’t
leave.
As a writer, I’m
supposed to be attentive, nosy even. Cell phone conversations make
this easy. In one afternoon at Nordstrom Rack, I heard three life
stories in three departments. Call it research. I may rob these
woman of their character, even steal a few phrases, but what if
someone else was eavesdropping? From the looks of the Lexus key fob
dangling from the Prada bag, a thief could do worse.
And maybe, to Ms.
Lexus, the phone call was important. But have you ever seen someone
answer that annoying ring and dash off on an emergency? Most cell
phone users are not doctors.
I saw two teenagers
walking along the road yesterday and my first reaction was; Wow.
Great. Kids do get out and enjoy nature. Then, I saw they each had a
cell phone to their ear. Wait a minute. You’re outside on a sunny
day with your pal right next to you, yet you choose a body-less
voice, a crackle and hiss over flesh and blood and blue sky?
How did this happen
to us? We may have begun as a nation of storytellers, but we’ve
become the nation who simply talks too much.
Turn off your
phones, people. Look around you. Be where you are.
This is what I want
to tell the woman standing behind me at the post office complaining
to her friend in Ohio about the wait, to the man yelling into his
Blackberry and honking his horn behind me in traffic, to the
teenager pinching her cell phone between shoulder and ear while
ringing me up at The Gap.
Turn off your phone.
Look at me.
