Hello there!
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
This morning I was running errands in Abilene and saw a couple of teenagers walking down the street. Were they laughing together? No! Were they looking at the scenery? No! Were they talking with each other? No!
They were oblivious of all of the above and had their noses intently focused on their cell phones. They weren't even talking on their phones but were evidently playing games. I'll tell you folks, the trend worries me. If you grow up with your nose in a cell phone your social skills go right out the window. If you only know how to interact with a video game, we're all in trouble.
Our cell phone companions have become so commonplace now that when we enter a movie theater, the screen reminds us to shut them off. I do wish that when you entered a restaurant or any public place for that matter that there was some prod to remind you to shut them off there, too.
You've seen it. I know it! People sitting around the table in a restaurant and several — if not all — are talking on their cell phones and not to the people at the table. What happened to the social niceties of pleasant conversation? What happened to looking into someone's face, making eye contact when you are talking with them?
In my grandma's day, the telephone became a vital source of information sharing. My Aunt Verna supposedly wore out the linoleum in front of their old one-ringie-dingie wall phone. She usually wasn't talking, just listening! The information your neighbors couldn't supply was often volunteered by the operator — a real person who knew more about the community and what was going on than anyone. When my Grandma Schubert had a heart attack, the operator in Ramona called my Uncle Hank at work in Herington and said, "I think you'd better get home. Your dad just called the doctor for your mom."
Since I grew up in a preacher's home and answering the phone was a major event, the telephone became more enemy than friend. The phone rang all the time and from as early as I can remember, it was my responsibility to answer the phone if my parents were available. For me, the phone was a disruptive annoyance. The phone kept my father from eating his meals. It kept him from looking into our faces and having pleasant conversations with his family. The call, any call, was vitally important to my father whether it was the call to the ministry, a phone call from someone in the parish, or The Call which would move the family from one church location to another. I hated calls — of any kind.
So, you could probably surmise then that I'm not the one who carries a cell phone on my hip in this more modern age. I drew the line a long time ago — the cell phone was for emergencies and not my buddy. All that said, I'm still sentimental about phones — what a contradiction. We have an old-fashioned phone like my grandpa used to have in our living room at the Ramona House. It's been converted so that it can still actually work and every time we use it we are grateful for the phone and the host of memories it conjures up. It is a marvelous invention that eases communication and saves lives.
However folks, it is constantly threatening to take over our lives. We need some serious self-control. In this mobile time we also need an extensive course in manners.
I'm sure you've been in a public bathroom and suddenly someone is talking to you from the next booth. "Hi, how ya doin'?" What? Are they talking to me or someone one booth over? I know they have virtual chat-rooms on the computer but do we chat in real bathrooms now? I don't think so!
The real hoot is to walk by someone and they are talking — no cell phone in sight, so you don't have a visual reference as to why this person is speaking into thin air. Obviously, you don't know them. You look around. They evidently aren't talking to me! And then, you figure it out — they have a little do-bob in their ear and they are talking right out loud to someone very far away. It's disconcerting.
It's another day in the country and gratefully, thankfully, I'm out of the city and back in Ramona. In my town, if I meet someone on the street and they say "Hello, did you get any rain?" they are actually talking to me.
