Can You Hear Me Now? Who Cares!

What the fuck is today's obsession with constant communication? I remember a day when people used to go out to bars to get away from other people and use the time to unwind. Now most of the young people that come in the bar are freaked out if they have gone a few minutes without a communication from someone. You can see them there, sitting at the bar compulsively checking their phone every few minutes to see if someone has texted them with some unimportant piece of drivel. I find it somewhat amusing that we have now come full circle. We employ very expensive telephones, actually small computers that you can talk on, to send each other letters, because we need to communicate but we don't want to talk. Very strange. Every night I will see people come into the bar with their toys, order a drink, and then spend the majority of their time there either talking or texting someone who was not there. Absent that, they sit and surf the web with their styluses and diminutive screens. Last night, just before closing, a young man came into the bar to meet his friends for a quick drink before closing time. As he enters, he was one the phone, he nodded to his drinking buddies and went from phone call to phone call. His friends ordered him a drink as he could not get off the phone long enough to do it himself. This went on for close to fifteen minutes. When he finally got off the phone, his friends actually applauded. He then had to gulp done his drink because he was only moments from the mandatory drink confiscation time. Now I would like to know, what the hell could be so important at almost two o'clock in the morning that required this amount of communication.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed to people come in on a first date. They took the time to inform the bartender of this fact while ordering their drinks. Once this was accomplished, they each got the phones out and began calling other people to talk to. When the noise in the bar became too loud to comfortably use their phones, they moved out onto the patio where they would have more peace and quiet to continue their conversations with other people, not each other. They remained at the bar for about two hours and during this time, did not spend more than fifteen minutes talking to each other. The young lady finally had to stop when the batteries on her phone died. What a tragedy. Another instance of this mania happened a few weeks ago as well. One of our regulars announced that a lady friend of his was to be joining him on this particular evening for some drinks. Time went by and she did not arrive. I asked him if she was still coming as this was a week night, it was very slow and we were contemplating closing earlier than the the mandatory state closing time. He told me he would text her and determine her ETA. Another thirty minutes passed, no response from the young lady so I asked him if she was still planning on coming to the bar. He replied, "I think so, I will text her again." I suggested that he call the bitch as texting did not seem to be providing an answer. He stated that he really prefer texting because he hated talking on the phone. Now is that fucked up or what? I ask you? I waited a few more minutes as he refused to make the phone call but texted her one more time instead and then I pulled the plug and closed the bar. Enough of this bullshit. I have also witnessed people write a very inflammatory text message about someone that they are dissatisfied with, i.e. "That fucking bitch ..." and accidentally send it to the person that generated their angst and not the person that they intended it for. That shit doesn't happen when you are actually talking to someone.

There is a sadistic side to me appartently because I have this recurring thought about taking these people and placing them in a room with no cell phones for a period of time, two or three days would be more than sufficient and watch to my great amusement as they slowly regress into the fetal position. The other type of people that I find totally amusing are those that consider themselves too good to even use normal cell phones. These self important assholes walk around all day pretending to be a science officer from Star Trek with an earpiece stuck in their ear and mumbling to themselves. The really good ones are those that have to use both of their arms while talking using wild arm gestures to emphasize and direct their conversations. As if the people on the other end of the phone could tell. I believe that a great number of these people really are certified imbeciles and their physicians give them these devices in an attempt to camouflage their mental malady from society. It does not work, you people still look and act like idiots. Get a life people. Damn!!! It is a telephone, not your life.