A Little Too Connected

AveryZoe

May 17, 2010

Ours is a hyper-connected world. At any given minute, people are calling, texting, emailing, and chatting from nearly every location possible. Forgot what I needed at the store? Just send a quick text home and get the list. Found a great new playground for the kids? Call up your friends for on-the-spot playdate. Bored while waiting in line at the DMV? Pull up Facebook and find out what that girl you kind of knew in high school is having for supper. No doubt about it, being so connected has its advantages. It's handy being able to just do it now--whether it is sending that email you forgot about, calling Mom on her birthday, or just killing time during your commute.

CellphoneSide (19K) Now that we've established how cool all these Internet-capable phones and devices are, let me tell you a secret: I don't have one. *gasps*shock*horror* Don't get the wrong idea--I have a phone--a lovely black cordless number that currently receives service through a landline. And there are cellphones in the house--my husband has had one for years--and we recently hooked up our pre-teen after years of begging. There are also computers on just about every visible surface, so I am definitely connected. But I do not own a cellphone, and I'll tell you why: connected has morphed into a little-too-connected.

Let me be clear, here: I don't want you calling me when I'm at the movies and I don't want anybody else in the theater getting calls either. If I pay approximately $800 for admission to the movie theater, I want to hear the dialogue--not Beyonce singing "Single Ladies" on your ringtone. I don't want you calling me when I'm in class and my teacher doesn't either. In fact, I'd say the teacher's even more opposed than I am. I don't want you calling me at my child's kindergarten graduation--and to the other parents whose annoying songtones ruined my iconic home video--have you not heard of the Vibrate mode? I don't want to be listening to the doctor explain symptoms while desperately fumbling for the silence button on the phone--not once, not twice, but three times. If I don't pick up the first time, probably I just don't want to talk to you, mmmkay?

Sure, I could turn off the phone at busy times, common courtesy dictates it, right? But here's the problem: people don't. They see the signs: "No Phones Please," "Turn Off Cellphone," "Turn Off The Freakin' Phone Already!" Somehow, though, these signs always seem to apply to everybody else but me. If you're speeding along in traffic, chances are you can glance over to see a fellow driver so busy cruising and texting simultaneously that s/he never even notices the gigantic "Dn't Txt & Drv" billboard above his head. Head out for a nice dinner, and whilst enjoying your $30 hamburger you'll be constantly serenaded by ring tones ranging from "Ode To Joy" to "Ode To My Bum." (No, that isn't a real song, but I think we can all agree that it should be.) These cases of cellphone insensitivity are annoying, it's true, but they come nowhere near the sad truth of what horrors our hyper-connected world has wrought. No, to truly understand that, you merely have to enter a public bathroom.

Yes, once you waltz through that battered metal door and join the seething masses of humanity inside, then and only then will you be forced to confront the cruel injustice that is now reality. There are people making calls in there. And not just inside the bathroom either, chatting and fixing their hair. They are in the stalls, doing their business and chatting on the phone (a business call! Haha!). I am shocked, I am appalled, I am horrified, that this has become the norm. This, my friends, is the true reality of what being too connected means. This is our new reality: where every call, every email, every text is absolutely urgent, and nothing can wait until later. I may not have a phone, but you do. I beg you, please, don't ever call me from the bathroom. I'll wait till you're finished.

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