Ah, the mobile phone. Do you have any redeeming features? Okay, okay, apart from the fact that in German they refer to you as 'ein Handy', because you are a 'hand'-held phone (which is rather cute), is there actually anything that you're good for, apart from being a little satanic quadrangle of pain?
Well, let's have a looksie.
People with mobile phones are often exceptionally rude. When I serve them on the till at work, they think nothing of answering their hideous little oblong of misery as I'm trying to talk to them. People go for dinner and sit with their phones out on the table, just in case they receive a text that just can't wait until the meal's over for a reply, normally from some vacuous acquaintance about their equally vacuous new bit of fluff. Texting's exceptionally narcissistic and not really a favoured mode of communication amongst humanity's higher strata. I mean, let's face it... the serial texters are never discussing world politics or human rights in these exchanges, are they? It's always 'I'm going to get my hair done!' or 'Oooh! I've bought a new nail varnish!' or 'Look! A photo message of my dog dressed up like a fairy!'. You get my drift.
Basically, they make boring people look and feel important (especially those ones who drive Audis and have stupid bluetooth headsets) because they get to have conversations in public that couldn't possibly wait until they got home. Marvellous. I think we need more technological advancements to make stupid people feel like their mundane existences are exciting and important. I think we need to allow them self to construct and even more elaborate fallacy based around illusions of grandeur as they buy their Daily Mails and look like they're going to cry if they accidentally bump hands with the filthy, little shop girl. (That's what anti-bacterial handwash is for. Or Bleach.) So good.
Anyway, this blog is to bring you two stories from either side of the mobile phone spectrum. The first took place on Thursday evening as I was propping up the information point at work, trying to look busy as there was - quite simply - nothing to do. A very busy and (un)important woman in a cheap Primark suit (can't let them know I'm struggling with the repayments on my double parked Merc) came down the stairs, cardboard coffee cup for the woman on the move in one perfectly manicured hand, mobile phone inevitably clamped to her head in the other:
"...well I don't understand why they couldn't have used some of the gravel that was already on the drive.... Well, yes darling.... I'm not paying through the nose for imported gravel...... oh, grey? ..... Sounds lovely......"
I hear a lot of crap on mobile phones, but this one stuck in my mind. Why would you want or need to be having an urgent conversation about gravel at half past six on a Thursday night. I mean if you're getting your driveway done, surely the tradesmen (probably immigrants *shakes middle class fist*) will be gone by then? Surely it could have waited until you got home? But no.
From the other side of the spectrum, my boyfriend (who hates mobile phones nearly as much as I do) lost his rectangular Hell-box on Saturday night and assumed he'd left it on the staffroom table at work. Unlike the majority of the population, not having a mobile phone for an evening was not a big deal, and didn't cause him to sit in the corner of a darkened room, sobbing and lamenting how many text messages he was missing. Plus, we normally just turn our phones off anyway, so it didn't make much difference. (An aside, people always look at me like I've started dribbling on myself when I tell them I often turn my mobile phone off, or as if I'm imparting to them that I like to go out on an evening and rape cows or something else equally as unsavoury. Why? Why is it so hard to comprehend that I find the incessant BZZZT BZZZT of receiving text messages left, right and centre from my brainwashed peers ("I couldn't live without my phone!") really rather intrusive? Is that really so difficult to understand?)
Anyway, the next day at work it wasn't there, and he conceded he must have left it in the bowling alley where we'd been on Saturday night. As we left work and walked to my car (which was parked in the same place as the day before), he spotted it lying on the floor of the car park. I think that sums up my relationship with mobile phones perfectly; they should all be allowed to go on little camping trips every now and then... they should all be allowed to spend at least one night under the stars. Unsupervised. They grow up so fast.... *sob* you've just gotta learn when to let go...
It also proves that there is no crime in Gateshead. The streets are safe. The Daily Mail can shut up shop and relocate to somewhere where there 'is' actually crime. (Oh, wait... it can't possibly leave Britain, immigration n'all that.)
So the moral of this story is this: Gravel Woman? Maybe leave your phone in a car park over night. The world won't end, you'll remove yourself from your proverbial 'high horse' (possibly, though I do suspect you may be Super-glued on...), and you might realise that there's more to life that RSI in the thumbs and the possible rick of a brain tumour, all in the name of squeezing and compacting communication 2 lss thn 160 chrctrs.
TTYL BBZ x
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