I was on my way back to the office from my semi-daily lunch run to Bojangl...I mean Subway...the other day when a commotion in the parking garage caught my eye. A well-respected leader from my organization was standing outside of his car pacing back and forth, making rather erratic movements (imagine the drunkest guy at a wedding trying to do the Electric Slide and the Macarena at the same time). Conflicted by my desires to help him, restrain him and pretend like I didn't see him all at the same time, I kept going thinking that he would instead see me and stop. He didn't. I got to the door and took one more glance back in hopes that the combination of the 110-degree day and the aroma of the cajun chicken sandwich I was carrying was causing me to hallucinate. It was then that I realized this individual wasn't in fact having a breakdown, he was just having a conversation...on the phone...using that wonderful piece of technology we know as Bluetooth.
I've drawn a line in the sand when it comes to technology, and that line is the miniature device that we can place in our ears enabling us to talk on the phone completely hands-free. This device also enables us to make innocent bystanders feel very uncomfortable as we carry on our phone conversations in public places. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a store or standing in line at Bojangl...Subway...and have attempted to interact with someone who wasn't talking to me. Hear me on this, I'm one who takes social etiquette very seriously, and I'm proud of my ability to detect clues that tell me when something is or isn't socially acceptable (my wife will more than likely disagree with that statement). But how am I supposed to pick up on a clue that I can't see? When I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with someone looking at diapers in Target, and they say something like, "So what are you doing later today?", I'm naturally going to respond with something like, "Put all of these diapers on my son at one time to see if it can be done." Oh, but wait, they weren't even talking to me, and now I've put myself out there to look like the weirdo. Sure, I have my moments of weirdness, but they have a piece of metal attached to the side of their head wirelessly transmitting a signal to the phone in their pocket, and I'm supposed to recognize what's going on while avoiding eye contact and risking an awkward situation in the diaper aisle? Well, Bluetooth, you just made the situation awkward because now I have to rescue the situation by whispering "sorry" and pretending like I'm ashamed of myself for not respecting the technology. We didn't have this problem back when mobile phones were tethered to bags that plugged into the cigarette lighters of cars. For my younger readers, yes this was once a reality--cars had cigarette lighters and mobile phones were for the elite...mainly because the service plans cost $200/month for 15 minutes of talk time. But back then, if I was addressed in the diaper aisle it was because someone wanted to share a conversation with me or, more than likely, was trying to get me to sell Amway.
Maybe my line in the sand is unreasonable and it's time to rethink it. I vowed that I would never relinquish my VCR for a DVD player, but after a visit to Blockbuster one day back in 2002, I realized how much of a social outcast I had become. After winding my through the rows and rows of DVDs, I found the 10 VHS tapes they still had on the shelf. They were pretty much all movies that I owned, except for one that I believe to have escaped from the naughty room of Roy's Video Warehouse two doors down. I received my very first DVD player a short time later. I'm wondering if it's time to redraw my line in the sand of cell technology and face the BlueTruth of Bluetooth.
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