Ah for the days of Ma Bell!

We here at danlangdon.com are far from Luddites. But we do tend to take a rather dim view of cell phones. While they certainly can come in handy in a variety of situations, we tend to lose them, and we are personally appalled by some of the more base uses.

Just the other day we were in the elevator at work, and had to listen to a particularly unpleasant man berate someone for thirty-two floors. And not long ago, while on a train, a young lady was having a conversation with someone that was of a, shall we say, graphically gynecological nature. Finally the conductor had to step in and ask the young lady to please take the conversation to the vestibule. Surprisingly enough, instead of being embarrassed, as any normal person would be, she was quite put-out by this request.

The thing that is amazing to me is the banality of most cell phone conversations. This is not to say that conversations in general aren’t banal, but at least when you have two people talking in your vicinity, you can tune them out. But it’s hard to tune out something like this:

“Hi. It’s Me. What’s up?”

(pause)

“Why? Does he have gas?”

(pause)

“Well, I told him not to eat that chicken”

(pause)

“Yes I did. I told him not to eat it.”

(And so on ad nauseum)

This gets one thinking: Just who is it that has gas? How was the chicken prepared? Is it one of those people who enjoy having gas, who thinks it’s funny? Maybe it’s a dog that has the gas – people talk to their dogs all the time, but they never listen – and they are certainly capable of eating questionable chicken and having gas.

To trot down this path surely leads to madness, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. You find yourself wondering why the person said what they said, and what the person on the other line will say. You are inadvertently drawn into their life.

Most people are, of course, oblivious. But those of us with taste and breeding find ourselves at sixes and sevens on this issue. To comment would certainly cause a scene with the ill-mannered bore having the conversation (witness the conductor who had to chasten the young lady) but to not say anything seems to condemn us to a life of having to listen to stupid people discuss the boring details of their somewhat redundant lives.

Maybe we here at danlangdon.com are Luddites after all….