A Time with Reasons for a Benevolent Revolution…

One of the ironies (to me anyway) of our time is the illusion that because we have cellphones and computers, we are more engaged with the world around us. In fact, I find that we can be more disengaged because of those devices.

Whenever I’m driving my car, I encounter at intersections someone in front of me who is so entranced by talking or texting on a cellphone that I need to sound my horn to arouse his or her attention in order to continue driving before the next light or to clarify the need at four-way stops that there are other drivers waiting for a clue too.

On one level, it’s really all about paying attention to one’s surroundings. There seems to be an increasingly blasé attitude by many cellphone users for whom the rest of humanity and the world at large simply disappear. I don’t know if this phenomenon is based upon the feeling of being more popular, important, or the delusion that any outside contact while driving must be even more urgent than avoiding a collision. Whatever the reason, many people seem to be more and more withdrawn from the actual, physical world around them as though hypnotized by the electronic device.

Just because one can find out instantly on his phone where in the world Bantu is spoken doesn’t mean that person is in any way aware of what’s going on around him. I get cold chills when I see another car speeding past mine, its driver on a cellphone, talking or texting, oblivious of anyone or anything in the immediate, physical environment. I weary too of seeing the increasingly accepted rudeness of cellphone users in restaurants and waiting rooms as they prattle on as though the folks around them are completely inconsequential. The scariest issue to me is that this impudence and grinding disrespect seem to be accepted more and more by too many as the price we must pay for that nebulous but sacred quest for “progress.”

I love the anecdote about the man on public transportation seated beside a young woman who was talking and cooing obnoxiously to her boyfriend for almost an hour as she grew louder and louder, cackling in the most ear-piercing way between comments. The gentleman seated next to her, having noticed the general annoyance of other passengers in the vicinity, simply grabbed the girl’s phone, saying into it, “Aw, come on, honey. Take off your robe and come back to bed!”

We, as a society, seem to have reached a point where we are confusing freedom of speech and movement with downright disrespect. Maybe when our sense of indignation and irritation reach the final border of tolerance about cellphone offenses in public, there will be a kind of mass revolt to bring back some level of mutual respect and a more sensitive awareness of public places and transportation.   JB

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Protected with IP Blacklist CloudIP Blacklist Cloud

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.