Yes...Hello? No, I'm not doing anything...EXCEPT BEING RUDE!!! - The Modern Cellphone Debacle

 Ladies & Gentlemen,

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

To talk of many things

Of shoes, and ships and sealing wax..."

...Of obnoxious people who have no idea how to act  in public with a piece of machinery that, I'll wager, if Lewis Carroll knew would be in existence and so misused, it would have been he, and NOT the Queen, screaming, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!"

Yes, my friends, the time has come to talk about the illustrious, phenomenal, horrifying, satanic, convenient, awesome, dreadful, brilliant, stupid, terrifying, marvelous....Cellular Phone.

A mobile communications tool that has changed the world in which we live...and NOT always for the better.

Now, I want to go on record first by saying that I am more than a little happy to say that the cellphone has been very good to me and I was proudly carrying one way back when they were the size of a small Volkswagen. However, even though the world's sense of decorum hasn't caught up with technology, I always used the utmost thoughtfulness and control when using it in public.

For clarity's sake I'm going to say now that when I refer to "cellphones" in this blog post I am referring, not only to phones, but also to PDAs, Blackberries, handheld gaming devices and everything else that makes us focus on our hands and ears and not to the world and the people around us.

Let it be said that I love, love, love my phone and, yes, I feel sort of nekkid when I don't have it with me. But I come from a time - and I feel incredibly old when I say this - that when someone wanted to get hold of you on the telephone and you weren't actually at home, they - get this - WOULD HAVE TO CALL AGAIN!

I KNOW, right?! Unheard of! The phone in your home would just ring and ring and ring. There were no answering machines, no voice mail...almost like caveman times, right?

Nowadays (and isn't THAT an old folk's term - Hey, Sonny, fetch me my teeth from that glass over there!) people will actually get angry if you don't have voice mail at the VERY least.

I'm all for progress but I'd also like to see it tempered with a little intelligent thought and courtesy when it comes to taking advantage of these new amenities in public. Again, let me remind you, dear readers and followers that I don't consider manners to be a club with which to beat society into submission. No, I just think that everyone could be a little happier in this world if we thought about the other guy every now and again.

 

So, anyway...

TO BE CONTINUED.......