Originally published on Town Hall: 8-13-09
Lots of chatter is going on about Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who both answered and talked on her cell phone in the middle of a question from a Cancer stricken lady in the town hall audience.
Controversial as the whole town hall thing has been these past couple of weeks, I am willing to accept the possibility that Miss Lee answered her phone innocently without any intentions of deliberate sabotage. Don’t get me wrong. Despite her intentions, the result was still rudeness. In fact, it was incredibly rude, but not any more so than the way most people handle their cell phones these days.
I have a cell phone myself, of course. It’s a wonderful convenience and I can barely remember anymore what it was like without one. How nice to be able to follow friends on a road trip without worrying that your hot shot buddy is going to lose you so that he can brag about what good time he made.
Still, the cell phone is a double-edged sword. In its own rite, I always considered the older land line phone to be an intrusive device anyway. Don’t you enjoy standing in some store line for ten minutes. Then, when they are finally ready to take you, the phone rings and the call automatically trumps any customer who is there in the flesh. Remember saying to yourself, “Hey, I actually took the time to come down here. Why does some meatball get first priority over me just because he dialed a phone?”
Or you’re in the middle of a heavy conversation with a friend and their phone rings. “I’m sorry,” they tell you, “But I really need to take this call.”
Or a bunch of people have gathered together to watch a video. The phone rings and instead of pretending you are viewing this movie in a theater the way the good Lord intended it to be seen, somebody feels obligated to grab the phone.
Once a friend of mine picked me up late for a ride to the airport. I almost missed my plane. Her excuse? “The phone just wouldn’t stop ringing this morning.” When I had the unmitigated gall to ask her why she bothered to answer the phone while running late, she said, “I feel guilty if I don’t pick up the phone.” Quite a society we have become, conditioned to jump every time a bell rings.
And then, there are the solicitors who neither hear the word “no” nor offer the word “salesman.” Instead, they begin with, “Mr. Siegel, how do three weeks in London sound?”
Enter from stage left, THE CELL PHONE. Now our daily situations of life can be interrupted about a hundred times as much. They go off at the banks. They go off at restaurants. They go off in the middle of church. They go off in the middle of movie theaters. They go off in the middle of plays. When people pick them up, they do not talk, they shout. That’s because we are used to the days when we spoke on a phone in the privacy of our home. We raised our voices to make sure we were heard on the other end and our hot wind was not rude because we were not in a public place. Nothing more fun than waiting in a bank line behind somebody who is shouting into his phone. Sometimes the person is unaware of how loud he sounds. Other times, I suspect they enjoy feeling important as the rest of us witness the amorphous business deal being made right before our very eyes.
The latest fashion is the ear piece. Now it just looks like somebody talking to himself. A couple of months ago, I walked into Taco Bell. The lady at the cash register looked me in the eye and said, “May I take your order?” I started ordering. She raised her hand and said, “Not you sir.” She was talking to a drive through customer through the wonder of ear pieces and her tone made me feel like quite the fool. Silly me. A lady behind a counter stares at my face, asks for an order, and like a complete idiot who doesn’t know any better, I start ordering.
Once, while in a movie theater a cell phone rang from a guy sitting next to me. It was his wife. I should not have known that but I did because the little discussion with Lamby Pie was impossible to miss. “What do you want?” he said sounding quite irritated. “I’m at the movies.”
I guess he must have felt she had some nerve calling him at such a time. Of course, he had the nerve to let his phone ring, pick it up and talk. Sometimes people are surprised to discover that they are not the only ones in a theater. NEWS FLASH: Often, others are also in the room and some of them would actually like to be able to watch the movie.
A few years ago, I took my daughter to see My Fair Lady. As the overture started, a cell phone went off. For some reason I’ll never understand this side of heaven, these huckleberrys are always sitting next to me. At least this time, the joker seemed to be aware that there were others in the theater and that he ought not to be on his cell phone. Unfortunately, this burst of revelation did not encourage him to turn it off. He still took the call. “I can’t talk long, because the show just started…”
Oh yes, and now the phones don’t ring anymore. They play colorful little jingles. My favorite is the sequence of melody that repeats itself three times, each one louder than the last. But that’s only one of thousands to choose from. Nothing more fun than preaching a sermon and suddenly hearing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach from the third row.
And so, let’s not be too hard on Congresswoman Lee. After all, a Congresswoman is supposed to represent the people. Her rudeness and stupidity do that quite well.
POSTSCRIPT: I kid you not: I am typing this article at Starbucks on my lap top. Even as I write, a lady is conducting business over her cell phone and the rest of us are being treated with all the details.
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