A few days I posted a piece about electronic devices, and how even though we’re connected more closely to each other with them, we also alienate each other with them as well.
I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but two more things really got me today…and I couldn’t wait to come home and immortalize the cretins, in cyberspace. Doubtless, the people who did these annoying and rude things don’t know me or the Advice Sisters, and they certainly don’t read this blog (actually, they probably don’t even read):
I was in a dressing room at Daffy’s (I admit it: I’m incapable of paying straight retail). I pulled the curtain to start trying on clothes, when a woman’s voice literally boomed around the dressing room. She was yelling at someone, saying how they had “dissed her.” For a moment, I assumed she had a friend in her little dressing room with her, and she was just a loudmouth (you know, the ones who never learned the “inside voice” and the “outside voice”? As the conversation continued, however, I realized she was alone, on a speakerphone! Everyone, every single person, heard the entire conversation whether we wanted to or not. At one point someone yelled “you’re rude!” The woman put her cell phone diatribe on hold for just a moment, to start curse with lots of very colorful expletives. She was still bitching and moaning on her cell’s speakerphone when I finally left, relieved to be rid of her.
Later in the day, I found my way to the subway to go home. I’d been on my feet for hours and they hurt! Normally, I wait in the back for the last car and usually get a seat. Today, I spied two seats just inside the door as I entered and no one else was going for them. I made my move. I turned to sit down. Suddenly, two little children–a boy and a girl–no more than 6 or 7, slipped under both my armpits and sat in the seats as I stood, astonished. The parent or nanny didn’t seem to be anywhere in site. Oh–there she was…talking on her cell phone (don’t know how she got service at 34th street). The train pulled out, stuffed with rush hour adult passenger having to stand with all their packages, and these two little kids, who didn’t even have to pay a fare happily played with video games. I finally got a seat on the other side of the train a few stops later. The woman with the cell phone was now listening to an Ipod and playing some sort of video game. She didn’t stop playing or to pull the earphone out to insist that I move over not one, but two seats for (guess who?) the two little kids!
Lovely world, isn’t it?
Do you have similar stories? please make my day, and add a comment!