I have for some time suspected that the folks who have always had mobile phones interact with the world differently than I do.
When I suggested last semester, for example, that it was possible to live without a cell phone, one of my students became incensed. I mean red faced, angry, and very loud. The idea of living that way was such an anathema to him that the very idea made him enraged.
I was in line at Starbucks last week, fairly early in the morning and the young woman ahead of me said (into her phone): "I just got up. I'm at Starbucks and am going to have a frappucino."
While there's nothing wrong with that per se, it struck me as odd. Why not go to Starbucks and have the frappucino and JUST NOT TELL ANYONE?
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "In silence we must wrap much of our life, because it is too fine for speech, because also we cannot explain it to others, and because somewhat we cannot yet understand." The woman in Starbucks and many of her generation believe just the opposite. Don't wrap up lives in silence. Narrate them. Tell everyone you know everything you're doing every moment of every day.
This afternoon, I passed a young woman on campus who said into her phone, "I'm really thirsty. Should I get something to drink?" I wanted to stop her, hold her by both shoulders and say, "Yes you should get something to drink if you're thirsty. The more important thing, though, is to be able to make that decision on you own without your phone."
Here's the thing. My academic field has taught me to believe that the stories we tell have great meaning about who we are as individuals and who we are as a culture. To borrow from another academic field, I also think, in this context, about phonemes. Those are the smallest discreet sound changes that indicate shifts in meaning. Change the c in cat to an h and you have the new sound and a new meaning. Folklorists have a similar idea. One way to look at stories, is to look for something called motifs. Motifs are the plot or character elements in a story that are unique. The glass slippers in Cinderella are a motif.
These non-stories aren't really stories at all, then. They're non-motifs strung together to fill the silence. Is there meaning? I can't say.
So here's my advice to the cell phone over-users. Go forth and live. No need to narrate while doing so.
14 comments:
I agree with you 100%, yet I can't help but think we bloggers are doing something similar by giving our opinions and telling our stories. I suspect we are a lot less irritating because we don't force people to read us.
I was sitting here reading your blog entry and this car parked out front and some people got out and now they seem to be yelling at each other. Should I go outside and see if everything is OK? A plane just flew overhead. Our house is in the flightpath of the Burbank airport, which was renamed Bob Hope airport after he died. The people stopped yelling, so they're probably OK. Should I go to bed? I'm kind of tired. I need to brush my teeth first, though, and that usually perks me up for some reason. It's kind of annoying. Maybe I should brush earlier in the night, so that when I'm ready for bed I can go to bed without that bracing minty taste in my mouth—that's probably what wakes me up. I don't think the dogs need to go out again. My desk is super messy. I'm going to go brush now. Bye.
i am going to leave a comment now.
my wife has no cell phone. she absolutely refuses.
personally... i like silence. I love the thougths in my own head. I don't need anything to fill that void - because its not a void at all.
I really think we need to have some cocktails with you people. I will turn my cell phone off.
(Teresa - please let us know when you are going to have lunch.)
Probably around 12:30. It's 11:55 now. I brought a Trader Joe's rice bowl. I'm looking forward to it.
Re cocktails: Name a place and time.
I have a cousin,several in fact. But one in particular came to his brother's 25th wedding anniversary party wearing a phone ear thingy. I half expected him to interrupt the toast to answer the phone. The toast was saved but most every other interaction with him was marred by the attention he paid to whomever was on the phone.
I have a cell phone but I keep it locked in my bag all day. My kids can't believe I don't check it every 5 minutes like they do. I also keep it on silent during the week. Another cell foul I'm sure but that way it doesn't ring when I'm going on about the War of 1812.
:-)
isnt' it amazing they could have the war of 1812 without cell phones!
Re cocktails: where are you LA? hmm, we can meet in the middle... that puts us somewhere nearWichita.
I hate talking on the phone. I hate it as much as your enraged student hates the thought of not having cel phones.
Anyone know a good cocktail lounge in Witchita? We'll need to trade cell numbers for the meet-up...
I might know a few places in Wichita. ;-)
I don't know how we'll get it organized without constant cell phone contact however.
I have a cell phone. I only turn it on to make calls, mainly to my husband. I have it on so rarely that when I do turn it on, I am informed (via a sudden outburst from Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") that I have a message, which is generally in the range of a day to a month old before I hear it.
The lesson in that? If you need to reach me urgently, DON'T try my cell!
I'm a bit torn on this (except for the cocktails in Witchita, I'm all about that). On one hand I despise hearing people's conversations in stores. Ijust don't want to know the details of their lives, unless it's really interesting and makes for good blog fodder. :) On the other hand, I love having my cell and being able to stay in contact with friends and family at any time. Generally when shopping am I not on the cell, unless it's at the grocery store and I'm calling to ask Fran something. Talking on my cell, hands free, while driving home from work is one of the best ways I stay in touch with out of state friends. It's the convenience of socializing, at my discretion, that I like.
Cell phones--who knew? Most comments ever.
Drinks in Witchita sounds great.
I should also probably say that I like my cell phone. It feels a little like a river rock.
The frappuccino narrator did have one person to whom the information was important: the barista. Beyond that, unless the narrator planned to share the drink with me or anyone else in earshot, the order was just more white noise in a world that seems incapable of allowing a moment's quiet to pass.
T.M.I. You tell the person at the other end of the cell phone you're ordering soy milk, and I would prefer you choked on nondairy creamer, so long as I didn't have to hear about it, but that is another story.
I feel that it is my inalienable right -- nay, my duty -- to make sure that anyone carrying on a quasi-private cell phone conversation in my earshot in public -- is kept up to the minute with my own personal narrations, regardless of whether I have a device attached to my ear.
Should the cellphoner looks at me as if I'm crazy, I simply assure him or her that the rest of the bus hasn't heard the results of his/her blood test, and I am simply trying to give him/her some privacy in the midst of all this public noise. (ha!)
What the hell -- we used to know that the people talking to themselves were crazy; now they may well be crazy, but apparently they are sharing this delightful news with anyone forced to share a sidewalk, a supermaket aisle or similar public common space. There's more than enough urban audio pollution to go around where I live.
The only time I give anyone my cell phone number is if I am going to be away from home for an extended period of time, and there is a possibility I may need to be reached in an emergency, strictly defined.
This has happened once in my life, three weeks ago. My friend of 29 years, who had fought metasticized (sp?) breast cancer for five years, had had a stroke, a heart attack, was unconscious in the ICU, and her mother, wishing she didn't have to place this call, reached me in New Mexico, where I knew that in no time, I would be re-routing my trip home, as I did, for a memorial service.
That is why I have a cell phone. I wish I lived in a world where I never needed one.
When you get right down to it, it seems the opposite of talking has become not listening, but simply waiting one's turn. And if these are the stories we tell, are we telling them simply to remind ourselves we are alive? As if someone, if you don't reach out and touch someone ASAP, 24/7, you will cease to exist?
As writers, the Misanthrope has a point. The difference is, to find us blogging, you need to search and want to read. We're not the town crier, and when we write of our lives, it is not, we hope, a grocery list or list of dirty clothes to wash.
"Only connect," Forster wrote. Would that he knew.
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