[lit-ideas] Re: more cell phone spottings

  • From: Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 13:35:40 -0800

Ursula wrote:
> Perhaps what really annoys us is that we overhear only half the 
> conversation.

ck: This is part of it, yes, though I don't think it's merely "annoying" to 
overhear half of a conversation. To some of us, listening in on anyone 
talking is rude. Eavesdropping (remember the concept, anyone?). We've been 
taught that phone conversations are "private" (remember that one, too?), so 
we're made to feel rude when someone engages in a private phone conversation 
in our midst. It's as though we're interlopers and they, the cell phoners, 
"own" this public space. Perverse as hell. Then, yes, annoying when we 
realize that they don't own the space any more than we do. But do we have a 
right to ask those cell phoners to carry on their private conversations in 
private? I wish! Indiscriminate cell phoners treat all space as if it were 
their own, and the rest of the world--real people in the here and now--are 
subjected to that miserable outsider feeling.

I hate it, especially in movie rental and bookstores. Here's a guy with a 
thingie that looks like a hearing aid, and he's reading the movie's 
description to some unknown being. (Oh, sorry. Thought you were talking to 
me....) Can't this guy pick out a movie on his own? Same for cell phoners in 
grocery aisles. What, they can't shop on their own anymore?

This weekend I experienced another rude case of cell phonery:  The 
instructor at a weekend seminar (college course, regular units) actually 
answered her cellphone--twice--in the middle of her lecture, while the class 
sat there waiting. Unfkgbelievable....

There. I feel much better now.
Carol K.



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