Okay so those are the negatives, cell phone have some great positives too, but as of late I am seeing more negatives. I will recap last week for example to show you just how consumed and self absorbed people are getting with the cell phones and mobile devices.
Monday- I went to the grocery store, and ran most of my errands. I got in my truck and got ready to back out, when the lady in the car next to me pulled in and opened her door. I drive a big truck, so I waited so I could be sure I cleared her car, and she was out of my blind spot. The door to her car stood open. I waited about five minutes and noticed the door on her car was still ajar, meanwhile people are stopping down the aisle waiting on me to back out so they can have my spot, and I can't move because her door is literally and inch from mine! I asked my son in the back seat to look down in her car and see what she was doing. In popular 8-year old fashion he says, "Ummmm, I am not sure what this lady is doing mom." I sigh, and lean over the console to look down into her car. There she is smiling away, cell phone in hand, she smirks, laughs silently, (she wasn't even having fun folks, she wanted to appear she was having fun!) she twists her head to the left, then the right, and then makes duck face and then pouty face, the door was open for good lighting, and JUST REALLY!!!???!!! I rolled my window down, and all I heard was the sound of her camera shutter going off. I told her, "Ma'am, you are awesomely photogenic, however can you try being courteous and shutting your door so I can back out now?" She shot me a dirty look and closed her door, but not before muttering, "Hater", under her breath. Ha, yeah okay lady.
Tuesday- I went to go get my son some school supplies, while he was at a pool party. I walked up to the cashier, and she smiles and says, "Hey Girl, how are you doing." Stunned I got someone with decent customer service I responded. "How have you been today?" She asks, and I was thinking, "Wow, I get a whole conversation I might just fill out one of those little surveys for her!!!!" I told her how I was and started asking her about herself, when I noticed she was looking at me really crazy by now, as she bagged my stuff. Then she says, "Look Girl, I am going to have to call you back I am at work." I was appalled! She had on a blue tooth and wasn't even talking to me! She was on her damn cell phone! She finished my transaction without another word, took out her highlighter and circled the survey at the bottom of the receipt, and handed it to me without even a goodbye. WOW. I almost got customer service that day. She definatly got surveyed.
Wednesday- I am driving down the road, and I get behind a bicyclist, I couldn't pass him because he was in the middle of the lane, and he was swerving crazily all over the road, like he just left happy hour a tad too happy, if you know what I mean. So I rode behind him until the other lane opened up can I could get around him. He rides up to the same red light I am at, TEXTING!!!! OMG, Texting and Bicycling on a busy road!!!! I wanted to flatten his tire!!!Thursday- The kids wanted pizza so I made a quick sprint to the grocery store. There was a lady that literally had her shopping cart longways across the aisle. She had her foot propped up on her basket, and it sounded like a rather heated discussion. I was already awkward, and trying not to over hear, but literally the cake mix I needed for my surprise desert was literally just on the other side of her. I tried angling my cart around so I didn't interrupt her, and she looked over her shoulder at me and continued her very heated discussion. When I couldn't fit my cart around her I finally tapped her shoulder and she looked at me, and I said, "Excuse Me, I need right over there." Maybe it didn't register or maybe I was just having a bad week, but she smiled, nodded, and turned her back to me and continued to talk!!!! I had enough, I just took my cart and shoved hers with it until I fit through, she was staring at me like I had slapped her, and I told her thanks, turned my cart around squeezed right back through the little hole I had made and went to check out. She had fire in her eyes and her jaw hung open, but she never put the phone down. Maybe shopping carts need horns now, to prevent basket rage, or here's a thought, hang up the phone or move to one side of the aisle to take your call.
Friday- I went to take a proctored exam. Here I sit in the student learning center, doing some last minute cramming before my final, and in walks a guy who sits down, and logs on to do what I think is the same thing I was doing (it was the last day for finals). His phone vibrates, and what does he do? He whips it out, and starts telling his mom how stressed out he is and how hard he has been studying. He had literally read until his eyes bled! He had been studying so hard, he had to come to the learning center right now today to study some more. He has studied the chapters left to right and now he was studying them right to left. I sat there staring at him as his 10 minute screen saver winked on, and did the scenery slide show. He let out a loud laugh and says, yeah thinks for watching Fido my dog while I study, you have no idea how hard I am studying right now. Rather than choke him with my mouse cord, I got up, and went and took my final. Hope he does as well as I did, with all that hard studying he was doing.
Saturday- Went on a date with the spouse, nice restaurant, I asked him that we put our phones away and just talk like told times, and he did. As I looked around the restaurant I noticed all these couples, posing with each other, and then taking to social media to I can only assume to post their picture and update their status, meanwhile their check came! They had spent their entire date on the PHONE! Wow, why even get married, they have an app or device for that! Ugh!
Sunday- Went back to campus to return a book, and ran by the bathroom. As I lock myself in the stall. I am forced to have my ear raped by the lady two stalls down, in the big echo-y bathroom have an ENTIRE conversation while she potties. I didn't require a long time in the bathroom, but as I washed my hands, and dried them while this lady kept chatting on her cellphone on the toilet, I was half tempted to toss my cell phone in the garbage. Do the people on the other end not hear toilets flushing in the back ground and offer to call back later????? Some things just need to stay private.
I think about how in the old days people thought cameras were going to steal their souls, so they didn't like pictures. They got that wrong...some two hundred years later mobile devices are the soul snatchers. Devices get smarter, people get dumber. A relationship is non existent without that status update! Some people are just #selfie absorbed, I could go on, but I won't. Everyone is guilty of more or all of these things, including myself. I suggest you get the moment app on your device and have it monitor how often you are using your device. Devices don't give you active brain cells. Devices don't replace relationships. Devices cannot give you back the time you lose. I challenge anyone in their off time to go an entire rest of the day without once using your device. I bet stress levels go down and relationships improve.
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