"It's like, like, like, like, he um, you know, he, like you KNOW? And I was just like, likelikelike I don't know. You know?"
NO. I don't know, and frankly I didn't want to, like, know, or overhear it in the first place. You know?
THis run on sentence was one side of a cell phone conversation, basically verbatum, because I just copied it down as she was speaking loudly to everyone in the bus. She looks professional, mid 30s with her blended blonde and her black suit jacket plus tastefully pale red blouse. But her behavior is anything but professional, and it is contageous. Usuallay, people feel some sort of peer pressure not to make loud or long phone calls on public transport. Within twenty seconds of this loud call, the social barrier to calling on the bus seemed to come down. Apparently, Blondie's call basically gave group permission to everyone to break that unspoken rule.
Now, I'm not for banning cell phones. I am for common courtesy, and that would dictate that cell calls on the bus be short, to the point, and as quiet as possible while still getting the message across. But lately, my commute has turned into a crowded phone booth at 50 miles an hour. Eventually commuters and drivers will demand a ban, and that will ruin the ability to do the quick "Hi, wife/dad/mom/signficant other I'm almost home" call that is always appreciated - or the "Please pick me up at the bus stop in 15 minutes" call that is pretty darn necessary.
If people won't, like, exercise some discression, like, you know, it would, you know, really suck. You know?
The Zen of Spam:
Alas, it was junk
and not a hoped-for message
from a long lost friend
------
Filtered in the trash
the flotsom and jetsam of
random bits and bytes
-----------
My breasts -- large enough
but perhaps he could use some
penis enlargement
----------
The boss' email vanished
a victim of the anxious
spam filter system
--------------
No party invites.
My filter categorized
them wrong. I am alone.
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All the above Creative Commons Licenced to
attribution-share alike, created by Howard Greenstein
in a moment of zen procrastination on 8-13-03