Daniel Meltzer finds he's breaking up and can't make a connectionwith mobile phone users
What is it about mobile phone users that is driving the rest of us nuts?
We are an ever-shrinking minority in a world of the compulsively connected who have seemingly little of interest to say, yet compel us to listen to it anyway, virtually any place, any time.
And it bores deeper than the annoying chirp or tune in the middle of dinner or in a lift, at a movie or a play, your bus ride or your lecture hall.
There seems to be something inherently wrong here, something beyond garden-variety rudeness, falling somewhere between a violation of the natural order of things and an attack on civilised society; something that simultaneously renders obsolete such seemingly conflicting niceties as public space, privacy and even non-electronic conversation.
A single mobile phone talker virtually seizes and occupies a public communal space and instantly converts it into his or her own.
And everyone in earshot must bear witness to one-half of a generally mundane, sometimes painfully intimate, fragment of a chat by and about matters and people of whom we know nothing and about whom we care even less.
The idea of going out for a casual walk, either to think something through or to think about absolutely nothing, has become quaint. Instead, it exposes us almost daily to the most alienating of experiences.
I am at least as nosy as anyone about how other people cope and communicate. The occasional brief, overheard exchange in a coffee shop, on a train or on a footpath has always been one of our secret guilty pleasures.
Go for a stroll or a ride these days, however, and they are, on the one hand, all around you all the time, and on the other, boring beyond belief.
New York City was never one of those "Howdy, neighbour" kind of places where cheerful street greeting and easy chat were common. Even in your own 'hood, a casual nod to someone you may often see but don't really know may provoke her defences. A mere "Hi" to the wrong face can leave you feeling stupid and off-balance.
Mobile phones have taken this down to an entirely new level. At any given time, on any given street, more and more of those you pass, walking alongside you, standing with you at the corner, are likely to be both there and not there, staring into space and speaking with someone a few blocks, or perhaps 1,000 miles, away.
Waiting on a runway for take-off these days, it's hard to tell jittery passengers desperate to make or receive a call from those in early nicotine withdrawal. And while they yak away in full volume the rest of us can only roll our eyes, grind our teeth and feel our stomach acids gurgle.
A relative called me from a city bus recently. "Please don't do that," I told her. "Why?" "Look around you," I said. She must have been getting stares. "Oh," she said. "But it's so convenient."
Think about that. You remember thinking? It's what we used to do while taking a walk or queuing. - (LA Times/Washington Post News Service)
Daniel Meltzer teaches journalism and theatre at New York University