Hey! I’m so sorry for talking in a coffee shop!
Jane Jacobs, an urban planning guru (who visited Althouse College in 2000) contends that more highways, wider roads, extra lanes and clover-leafs won’t solve traffic congestion or make life easier while driving.
“More roads create more cars,” is her comment.
Her words came to mind after I received a silent rebuke from the next table while at the Roaster in Wortley Village recently. A cell phone rang as my friend Don Kelly and I chatted about RRSPs, how rich our wives would be when we die, his job at school and the high price of Levis.
I laughed at one of Don’s off-handed remarks and suddenly got the ‘eagle-eye’ from a person that meant, “Hey! I’m on the phone here!”
I said, “Oops, sorry.”
Within seconds I thought, “What am I sorry about?”
I leaned quietly toward Don and posed, “”This is a coffee shop, right?”
Don was looking around the Roaster to see why I was sorry. Under questioning he would say I am one of the sorriest friends he has but he hadn’t caught my most recent foul.
“It’s a coffee shop,” he agreed.
It’s okay to talk in here, right? Laugh on occasion? Get a refill?” I queried earnestly.
Don shifted in his seat, folded his arms and nodded. So I nodded toward the Hawk and told him what had happened.
The conversation that followed touched on our opinions about cell phone etiquette, how often we used our own, what to expect when using a cell in a coffee shop and the high price of eggs.
Don and I concluded we would continue to take a cell in our cars while travelling (for emergency use), and that our normal conversations at the Roaster shouldn’t have to quiet down to allow a cell user to tell friends where they were at that precise moment, who they were with or what movie they had seen last night. If there was an important matter, e.g., a medical or family emergency, we would make the call or be the quietest guys in the coffee shop.
We thought it was a timely discussion because more phones have created more conversations. Cell phone conversations are taking place everywhere, and phones are being offered by several companies ay lower and lower prices in all types of media ads.
[“Cell trash abounds.” Click here for photo link and comment]
Have you seen the TV ad about a father giving his daughters call phones as gifts? He slips a cell into one daughter’s pocket, another into a gift bag as the young ladies are heading back home or to the university. Before they arrive at their destination he calls. It’s such a lovely moment.
I wish one daughter would say, “Dad, you could have called me at home in 20 minutes. You know, I have three phones in my apartment and my current service is a lot cheaper in the long run. By the way, are you going to send Julie money every month to keep her cell activated? As a student she’ll have a hard time paying for two phones.”
A Mitsubishi magazine ad for Internet-connected cell phones says, “The world doesn’t revolve around you... But we’re working on it.”
Wow! If I bought two would I get to be the center of the universe?
Not likely.
I think most phone conversations should take place in the comfort of our homes. Not in the coffee shop, in a moving car, at the movies or theater, while walking through a mall or an intersection.
The world shouldn’t have to revolve around us to that degree.
gah
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