Disembodied Voices Talk to Me

We took the kids to see Ice Age 2 last week. There was someone in the audience messing with their cell phone. Some man with a very deep voice commanded that the rude person, "Put that cell phone up!" (Translation for non-Southerners: "Put that cell phone away!")

Like every other person in America, I think people have lost all common sense when it comes to cell phone usage. But, personally, I think rather than people learning manners, we, as a society, will just get used to the intrusion of technology, and what was once considered rude will soon be tolerated as normal behavior.

For example, consider talking on cell phones in restaurants and book stores. As long as people keep their conversations at the same volume they would use to converse with a live person, what's so wrong about it, really? It's when people intrude on our own conversations that it becomes rude.

Take what I heard in Barnes & Noble last weekend. (By the way, I only peed!)

I was walking by the information desk when I heard a voice on the speakerphone. The employee was helping a customer and the person on the speaker phone was saying, "Hello? Are you there?"

It seemed like the employee was trying to be polite, but send the customer on her way as quickly as possible in order to pick up the phone.

But as I walked further away from the desk, the voice stayed just as loud. "Hello? Are you there? Hell-0!"

I kept walking and shaking my head. What idiot walks around with their cell phone on speaker without even noticing?

"Hello! Anyone there? Tuna? Tooooona? Are you there?"

Ha, what! Tuna? Ohhhhhhhh! I'm the idiot.

It seems the half eaten package of M&Ms that I confiscated from my kids and tucked in my purse managed to hit the Answer button and then the Speakerphone button.

It's really kind of amazing if you think about it.

It may have been rude to walk around the bookstore with my purse yelling greetings to everyone within earshot. But it may have been ruder if the M&Ms had picked up later that night while my purse was sitting on my nightstand.

Damn M&Ms. I never really trusted Red.