A reader called last week to talk about my recent column concerning cell phones in public spaces and what that space invasion might say socially and culturally about us.
My caller was a 50-year-old health professional and he said he'd too been subjected to endless drivel-laden cell phone conversations while riding public tranport.
I'm not sure I buy his theory but I found it interesting enough to relate, almost verbatim, to you, faithful readers:
"It's all the reality television crap these people under 40 watch. They are so poisoned by that stuff they think all life is a reality television show and that they are starring in one. I don't think there can be any argument that Americans under 40 are more shallow than people 40 and up," he said.
I think there have always been folks who skate on the surfaces of life. But in this information-deluged society, where everyone is hooked up electronically and (voluntarily) pelted with random images and sounds for what seems like every waking minute of their lives, there probably are more folks who, even if they could read seriously and think hard, don't feel they need to bother doing so.
But even more importantly, I think the cell-phone-blitzkrieg points out that social relations between strangers continue to slide rapidly downhill.
As my 89-year-old mother would say, talking loudly in public about your private, personal and even sexual life hints that you are extraordinarily self-centered and extraordinarily ill-mannered.
For me, someone who is willing to forget about manners quite often, the personal life-spewings on the buses says something else: it says the talker doesn't really understand modern life. Why would I want perfect strangers to know my business? I'm not sure a person should tell his friends and lovers everything, much less total unknowns riding cheek-by-jowl with me by total happenstance.
Whatever the reason, society is changing. A majority of Americans a few years ago supported government intrusions into private life, notably the misnamed Patriot Act, and the seeming majority who scream into a tiny cell phone WHEREVER they happen to be show no reticence or even concern for personal spaces, theirs or ours. I just don't think reality television is a big factor in this obvious dumbing down of the citizenry. And I'm not sure it's all the fault of people under 40 either.
But something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and life teed me up a fat example the other morning while I was on the No. 358, heading for Shoreline and Alzheimer's World, where I toil four days a week. It was a Sunday and the only really beautiful girl who rides the route regularly climbed aboard a few stops after I'd taken my seat.
I'd seen her three or four Sundays in a row and, although I never thought about her elsewhere, I was once again cheered watching her glide down the aisle. She sat across from me and took out her cell phone. And started calling her friends to tell them, in a flat yet breathy voice, how her recent ex had kept her up all night. "He called 28 times between 4 in the morning and 8 a.m. ... He threatened my parents... I might get killed at work." And on and on. Not really sounding a bit frightened. But appearing oddly excited and maybe even pleased that her little life was taking on that Law and Order tinge.
"I was missing him but I'm glad I never called him now," she was saying as I pulled out "Everyman" by Philip Roth and tried to hide in his clean yet densely affecting pages.
I felt sorry for the girl. For her life, and her foolishness, talking about one and exhibiting the other for all to hear. And I felt sorry for me. My fantasies of meeting and charming Baby were as dead as her last relationship and no number of calls could revive it. Another small, secret and harmless pleasure had turned up its little toes.
Hang up, Baby, please!
Columnist Dennis Wilken can be reached via mageditor@nwlink.com.
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