A new rudeness

Our ancestors had to content themselves with a communication system that often took months to get a letter through, then Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. I'm old enough to remember "Central" when you rang the local operator to make a long distance call. She would patch the call through to the county seat, and it would be plugged in to the state capitol. From there it would be routed from one operator to another all the way across the country. With each additional connection you would lose a bit of volume and quality so a call several states away might require you both to shout to be heard at all. It could also take a couple of hours to make the linkage and the operator would ring you back when they'd completed the connection to your party. I think the realization of direct dial really hit me when we lived in Arizona. We had a couple of girls from Holland living with us a few months, and they wanted to call home to let their parents know they were okay. In the front of the phone book it told how to dial international. They punched in the appropriate numbers and the phone rang in their parents livingroom in the Netherlands. Amazing.

Then they invented to mobile phone. Originally it was mounted in the car, or was carried in a small suitcase but as technology progressed they got smaller. Now I think the only limitation is enough space for buttons and ear to mouth capability, and we've created a whole generation that must be in instant communication with everyone they know. It's become the new measure of rudeness. Drivers so engrossed in their conversation they don't notice they're doing 30 in the left lane of the Interstate in a 70 mph zone, or drifting between lanes, running stop signs, and basically oblivious to the fact they're supposed to be controlling more than a ton of hurtling steel. Running into you in a supermarket because their mind was on the conversation rather than their surroundings, having the phone ring in a movie theater, a wedding, a funeral, just anywhere. Rudeness. They come to your home to visit you and half the time there they are taking and making calls on their phones like you have a hold button and will wait for them to get back to you when they finish with their chat. We even had an uninvited insurance salesman ask to show us his wonderful plan. During the presentation his phone rang and he answered it. He may not have noticed, but his sales pitch ended right there. Any chance he had of selling me a policy went right out the window. If they were talking to me and I just walked away in mid sentence, they'd think me extremely rude, but when they answer the phone in the middle of our conversation that's precisely what they are doing. I had to carry a cell phone for business for several years. If I was in heavy traffic or on the freeway when it rang I let the answering system pick it up and take a message. If I was with a customer the phone was shut off during that time. It doesn't take a genius to understand simple concepts of courtesy concerning this new bane on the American scene, so why is it most cell phone owners can't seem to understand this?