TheBanyanTree: Blah, blah, blah

[Margaret R. Kramer]

What is it with these cell phones?

I took my car in to the dealership for an oil change.  I got some free
coffee and found an empty chair and settled in to wait for my car.  For
once, my brain cells were firing properly in the morning, and I remembered
to bring a book with me, so I wasn’t at the mercy of the magazines kindly
provided by the dealership.

Before I gave myself to the book, I looked around the room and noticed
several people with cell phones stuck to their heads.  Then I heard them.

As I watched over the next few minutes, a bald, but rather youngish looking
guy sitting directly across from me, must have called 90% of the numbers in
his cell phone’s address book.

Call #1 – “I took the day off today.”  He was wearing a nice shirt and
pants.  He must have had a “business casual” day off.  I usually wear jeans
and a sweatshirt on my off days.

Call #2 – “I’m getting an oil change.”  That’s breaking news.

Call #3 – “I don’t like purple in his kitchen.”  What’s wrong with purple?

Call #4 – “I’m not sure where to go to dinner tonight.”  Was he trying to
get a date?  Or begging a friend to go with him?  Or just couldn’t make a
decision?

A motherly looking woman to my left wasn’t talking so loud, but she, too,
was working her cell phone’s buttons like a crazed person.  Plus, she was
multi-tasking, and balancing her check book at the same time.  Amazing.

Then I saw the guy who was ahead of me in line when I got to the dealership.
He was the one that had to question every detail of his car’s oil change.
He went on and on with the technician, while I stood there, playing with my
yellow sticky the service technician who greeted my car gave me and where he
wrote down my mileage and license plate number.  He must have known I have a
horrible short term memory problem.  The sticky was getting less sticky as I
kept moving it from finger to finger.  Finally, the guy ran out of gas and
went to the waiting room and I got to check my car in.

Thank goodness, he was far enough away from me that I didn’t have to listen
to his cell phone conversation.  I had heard enough of his voice for the
time being.

I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and opened it up.  Should I call
someone and tell them I was getting an oil change?  Should I tell them about
my book?  Should I tell them it was raining?  Should I talk loud enough so
everyone in the waiting room could hear my life story?

I decided not to torture anyone with the mundane details of my life at the
moment and closed the phone and put it away.  I opened up my book and soon
was drawn into a much more interesting and quieter world of the written
word.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

~William Shakespeare