Police searching missing children need walkie talkies.
Construction teams coordinating tons of materials in small spaces need walkie-talkies. Transplant surgical teams awaiting the arrival of an organ need walkie-talkies.
The woman at the next table in a restaurant does not need a walkie talkie. And she really, really doesn't need to share it with us.
I have no problem with cell phones used at a conversational level in places people would normally have conversations -- restaurants, trains, walking down the street. I see a cell phone as a small, anonymous companion for people alone. Of all the things I've encountered in public restrooms, hearing someone chatting over the flushes is among the least offensive (but then again I'm not on the other side of the phone call).
As a trained journalist, I became an skilled eavesdropper long before cell phones appeared. I learned early along that what most people have to say is only interesting to themselves, those who love them and those who get paid to listen. Having only one side, cell phone conversations are only half as banal as traditional chats and easy to fade into white mental noise.
But the beeping and shouting of cell/walkie-talkie conversation is demanding. After you affirm that a backhoe is not heading your way, the obnoxious electronic punctuation of a beep at the end of each exchange is unavoidable. I can't hear anything else in the room. Like being trapped at a bad performance, you listen if only in anticiptation of the relief of the last exchange.
Is it only because I regularly encounter unskilled practitioners who shout as if they are talking in to an orange juice can with string and can't seem to find the volume colntrol? Or are these the basic qualifications to purchase such a unit?
Listening to these large, squawking two-sided conversations about edging plants, dentist appointments and tee times is like worse than a jackhammer chorus.
We were having dinner after had seeing Fahrenheit 9-11 on Sunday, when they seated a woman who took her first call as soon as she sat down. Shoes, the menu, the rain... she chose the topics for everyone within earshot for the next 45 minutes.
It dawned on me then that if the President of these United States could sit mute and still for seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack, the least this lady could have done was wait until dessert to start the squawk.





Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs