HELLO? HELLO?

22 September 2021

I love this cartoon.  Mainly, I think, because it reminds me of Walt.  I don't know exactly how much time he spends on his phone or how often he has it in his hand, but it seems like whenever see him, wherever I see him, he's looking at his phone.  He's the only one who looks at his phone at the dinner table.  He's probably reading the news but before we got cell phones, he almost never used a phone so it always seems strange to see him sitting off in a corner with his nose in the cell phone.

Maybe I look the same and I'm just not aware of it.  It doesn't seem to me that I use my phone all that much.  I have a couple of word games that I play while watching TV at night or a book I read on Kindle, but I often miss things because I have no pocket to put a phone in and so most of the time, I'm in one room and my phone is in the other -- and with my continuing hearing loss, I can't hear it.  I can't even hear it when it plays an alarm that I've set, unless I am aware of it and sit there looking at it.

It is amazing to me how much phones have become a part of our lives.  This is a very typical scene in a coffee shop, for example.

When I am in a restaurant with a friend, my phone is on the table next to me, but it's not to check for messages, it's to take a picture of my meal.  It just always seems impolite to get together with a friend socially and then interrupt your conversation to check something on your cell phone.  When I have lunch with my friend Kathleen, she has her phone on the table too.  She gets a lot more phone calls than I do.  She checks to see who it is and then sets it to silent, so she will answer something important, but saves everything else for after our lunch.  If I get a call from Sandy, I'll answer it because it's about my mother, but otherwise, I don't answer phone calls.

It bothers me to see advertisements for things you can mount in your car so you can see your phone without taking your hands off the wheel.  I thought you were supposed to be looking at the road, not the cell phone!  I do find it important (though it usually isn't) if I get a notification when I am in the car, but I pull off at the next off ramp to check it, rather than looking at the phone while driving.

I am so glad that we have these phones all things considered.  When I think that this little phone I hold in my hand can get me the same amount of information that a set of encyclopedias could...and more...it's amazing.  I'm so happy that Sandy uses his phone to send me notes and photos of my mother, that Tom can share with me the granddaughters' birthday celebrations, and that Jeri and I can watch a TV program together with FaceTime.

Alexander Graham Bell would be amazed.