Sunday, April 20, 2008

Why Don't We Go Out to Dinner So We Can Catch Up With One Another

There were only two sets of us, us and the two women who sat down and ordered the fishbowl drinks. The woman facing us immediately picked up her cell phone and began talking to her daughter, Bad ex-Boyfriend did WHAT! and he didn’t need to do that and tell him your mother will get a restraining order and make sure it was carried out until the day she died, yadda yadda yadda yadda, and more yadda yadda yadda yadda, put Honey on the line, Honey, Darlin’ has been having a rough time with her daddy and all and she doesn’t need this, and it's so bad I'm out having magaritas and Bad ex-Boyfriend is everywhere she goes, he doesn’t want to date just to be friends and how is she going to meet other boys if he’s always around and she doesn’t need that she’s having such a hard time with what her father did she was so broken up she almost couldn’t walk down the aisle and could Dante just call up a few people and get her together with some people she could make friends with she doesn’t have friends here and if Dante did that Mom would make a donation to the organization and yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda.

When I wondered idle thoughts about did she really want that much of her business all over the Mexican restaurant, her companion turned and looked in our direction, but I was mostly looking at my husband, at least I hoped I wasn’t gawking because that conversation was a magnetic as t.v.

Thanks and expect a donation to the organization, Darlin’ really needs this, Momma said and put down the phone.

For two seconds.

Same phone call, or a different one, my husband asked as the yadda yadda yadda when she told me I almost cried yadda yadda yadda went on. And on. And on.

If I were with her, I would knock that phone out of her hand, my husband said.

But her brain might fall over and she might never recover, I said, she might not know how to talk without the phone, and at least with the phone her friend and the rest of us are getting the real poop.

Momma was still talking on her little phone when we left. I glanced at the companion as we walked by, and when we got back to the truck, I was able to reassure my husband. Don’t worry about the friend, I said, she was sitting there text messaging.

3 comments:

Nicole said...

I love the irony of the cell phone. Invented to make us more "connected" to each other, but instead isolating us from the people who are actually right in front of us.

Humans are good at irony though.

=)

Keetha said...

That level of rudeness is now acceptable, which kind of pains me.

Mrs. G. said...

I can't tell you how rude I think it is for someone to be in a shared public space to be having a full volume conversation on their stupid phone. My husband and I were out at an Indian food restaurant last week, and the woman in the booth behind us took FOUR calls during dinner. I never want to be that important.