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I'm driving down the hill above the capitol, wanted to get pictures of the Key Bank from up there before they imploded it. I'm going maybe 30 MPH when this woman in a Volvo SUV decides she wants to go 40. Rides my rear bumper until I almost come to a stop, and then she tries to pass me. On a residential street. Well, her asinine driving aside, the whole time she was behind me she was, of course, yakking away on her cell phone. As much as I hate cell phones and driving, that's not even the point of this post - the point is that what looked like her daughter was sitting in the passenger seat right next to her, that we are getting altogether too comfortable talking to someone across the valley through a little box rather than the warm, living, breathing person right next to us. Ever seen 3 people at a restaurant, all of them on cell phones? 2 people in a car or a group in the park? I have. This woman may very well have had something important to tell someone, something that couldn't have waited. How sad, though, if she let her daughter sit there in silence as she chatted with her friend about last weekend? Or even been talking to her office about something that could have waited 15 minutes?
I firmly believe that no matter how "connected" we claim to be with e-mail, cell phones and even blogs like this, that NOTHING compares to sitting down next to someone and chatting face to face. And we, as a society, are willfully giving that up.
Pathetic.
5 comments:
Okay, it's not about quality time with anyone, but I have a driver complaint from yesterday.
The speed limit on Foothill is 40. So, there's this guy -- about 25 or so-- who's holding up a whole line of cars by driving 25-ish because HE'S SHAVING. No joke. cordless shaver in the rear view mirror.
So much for women putting on make up when they drive.....
Okay. I saw another good one today. I was walking back from the library, and along comes this guy on a bike, on Foothill Dr. with all that traffic. He's got one hand on the handle bars, and the other is to his ear while he yaks away on his cell phone. stupid.
We've had an old friend in town the last few days, so I've been out to dinner quite a bit. Last night at The Teppanyaki (where you get seated with other people to fill up the table for 8) we sat with 3 20-something girls. One of them would pull her cell phone out every 2 or 3 minutes, read and send a text. She did this throughout dinner. Tonight at The Spaghetti Factory, right behind us was a table full of couples. One of the, again, 20 something women, with her arm entangled in her boyfried/husbands arm spent the first 20 minutes of dinner texting. Pathetic, that's all I can say. If my date spent 20 minutes of our date texting, that would be one of the last dates we had. Even if we were married.
Someday I ought to learn how to text, just so I can text my students homework reminders and messages that say things like" put the phone away now or it's mine.'
No kidding. I tried texting once, too me 20 minutes to type "Hi, this is Mr. Rossi". Decided to give it up for lent.
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