caller ID
Maybe you already heard the results of a new study that shows 14% of cellphone calls are phony – meaning, the person on the phone is pretending to talk to someone on a non-existent other end. That’s one in seven calls are meant to remove the user from real interpersonal contact with the excuse he has a call coming in. This is maybe great news for thespians, all this acting practice, but not so great for actual relationships.
Consider this next time the person you’re in mid-sentence with suddenly breaks off for that important I-have-to-take-this-call incoming. Good chance they’re nodding and bobbing, babbling away at the soft hum of a dial tone, pausing, listening, answering back, all to remove themselves from the great pleasure of your company. Course our friends wouldn’t do that, just everybody else’s. But … occasionally you might try slipping off to dial their number, see if it rings while they’re in mid-chat with Harvey the Six Foot Rabbit. Good chance they’ll just put you on hold, probably, and keep on talking. In the end maybe even a crummy friend is better than no friend at all.
Down here on the South End, we sort of expect strange behavior from our pals. If we wanted Normality, we’d have moved north a long time ago. But you ask me, anybody who answers a cellphone in the middle of our conversation, made up call or real, is sending me a message loud and clear. Maybe time to go weed the garden, let them talk without an eavesdropper.
Still, it’s a tad troubling, this phone-call-from-the-void stuff. Sad enough to get solicitations from strangers with odd regional dialects, really almost alarming to chatter with nobody. Next thing you know they’ll be doing it when they’re alone. And before long, mark my words, they’ll be writing a blog nobody reads. ….. Uh-oh. Operator, I think I been cut off….
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