Living for dead zones
Secondhand cellphone chatter is a hang-up for everyone who has to hear it
Election Day was Tuesday, and before I congratulate the winners, I’d like to put them right to work, because this keeps happening to me. I’m in line somewhere, and a phone goes off. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the person has just walked into wherever I’m standing and is already on the phone. It doesn’t matter. The point is that it’s happening. What I’m then listening to varies from caller to caller: leveraged buyouts, lazy nannies, urinary tract infections, “Cameron Diaz winked at me.’’
Often these people are already there, in line, and usually the line doesn’t move. This is a problem. Recently, it happened in a midsize coffee shop. Although it hardly matters when it occurred or where, since it happens almost anywhere in Boston - except in Theater One at the AMC multiplex across from Boston Common, on most stations on the Red Line, and, oddly, at the brand new Cambridge public library. These are what
Sorry. The coffee shop. So, a middle-aged man’s phone ring tone goes off (it was “Party in the U.S.A.’’ by Miley Cyrus; don’t ask; I say either a goofy daughter or a vindictive mistress). He takes the call while 10 people wait for him to realize that 10 people are waiting for him to realize. The woman behind the counter asks if he’s ready to order. He puts his hand over the phone, studies the menu, deliberates, makes a false start, decides, then resumes his conversation by clamping his neck and shoulder to hold the phone while he searches his wallet for cash. He almost handed over a Canadian five.
We all hated this man. We tried staring a migraine into his head. And we seemed to find collective satisfaction in stoning him telepathically. But one of us had a hard time containing herself. She tapped the man on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of the register. “No cellphones at the counter please.’’ The coffee at this particular place is usually very good, but the sign is better. Sometimes the customer is annoying. I don’t know what that man is like when he’s not on his phone in line at a coffee shop. But when he is, he’s a moron. He can’t figure out what kind of coffee he wants or what kind of money he’s using to buy it.
I like that “No cellphones’’ sign not because it makes sense (although it absolutely does) but because it makes me feel like I make sense. Have you listened to yourself complain about people and their phones? You sound old. This is a device that can let preschoolers pretend to drink a beer and then pretend to belch. Who wants to stand in the way of that?
But there’s clear ambivalence about our progress. I love my phone. I hate yours. (And I really hate your Bluetooth device, but that’s for another time.) For whatever reason, a secondhand cellphone conversation is almost as annoying as secondhand smoke, but increasingly more pervasive. You can still talk on a train, at the movies, and on the recumbent bike (the recumbent bike!). Hugh Jackman just stopped a Broadway play he and Daniel Craig were doing when a cellphone went off, and the audience practically gave him a standing ovation. There’s a wonderful scene in Claire Denis’s “35 Shots of Rum,’’ which is playing in Kendall Square, in which an otherwise mild Frenchwoman whips out her phone to make a call and speaks in a volume that - even though it’s an emergency - exasperates her fellow passengers.
Our lawmakers are focused more on banning texting while driving and mandating hands-free equipment (argh, Bluetooth!). Businesses, meanwhile, have a responsibility to post “No cellphones’’ signs at their registers. Talking while ordering isn’t deadly, just obnoxious. But in complaining about this, I should probably ask myself why I care in the first place. It’s a tad narcissistic, no? Stop talking, and notice how you’re not speaking to me. Whomever you’re on with can’t be more important than the box of Cap’n Crunch you’re delaying me from buying. Of course, it’s more complicated than my being ignored. We’re talking about a class of people who have redefined call waiting.
