Cell Phone Rage

Last night when I got home from teaching my class in Boston, I had a glass of wine and a big piece of Green & Black's chocolate.

It was a reward, of sorts, for not losing my temper on the bus home.  The restraint I showed in not ripping the cell phone out of the hand of the young man two rows in front of me and crushing it under my heel was quite remarkable.  But it was close.

The young man -- let's call him Rube -- is a student at Boston University, on his way to Providence to see his brother, who is in medical school at Brown University. Rube was talking to his friend -- apparently his friend's name is  "Dude" -- about Abbey, the bitch (his word) he had just broken up with after she showed up at a party at his frat house with some guy named Jake from MIT. Rube never really liked that bitch anyway, as she was just all full of herself because her father is some big shot lawyer from New York City.

How do I know all this? Because Rube was talking so loud that everybody on the bus knew it!!!

For one solid hour, between 8 and 9 pm, this imbecile, in a bus full of tired people trying to sleep, read or just relax, had to listen to Rube chat with Dude! Two fellow passengers, men, asked him to please keep it down.  The decibels went down for all of about 30 seconds, and then his enthusiasm for trashing Abbey drove it back up again, reaching a crescendo with the shrill chipping and rapid trilling of a chipmunk! Earphones didn't help -- you could still hear him.

When the bus stopped, the driver read him the riot act, saying he had been ready to pull off the road and make him get off.

Mister Driver, Hello! Why didn't you do it!?  You would have had a bus full of passengers cheering you on!

Rube, meanwhile, stood listening with a wide-eyed innocent look on his face as he was chastised -- but still didn't hang up his phone, and went right back to his conversation when the bus driver ran out of steam.

I know, I've ranted about people's lack of cell phone "manners" before -- but only as part of a post. It definitely deserves its own rant.

Of course where it really gets interesting is when cell phone rage meets road rage.

My new hero is a guy in Russia who recently got out of his car and SMASHED the cell phone of another driver who almost caused an accident.....because, not surprisingly he was talking on his phone. The video is priceless. Just watching it releases the same kind of tension as an hour of kickboxing.

Come on... admit it....you've wanted to do that.  I know I have. (No, I do not have anger management issues...)

Actor Laurence Fishburn drew audience applause not just for his Broadway stage performance a couple of years ago, but for bellowing at a cell-toting spectator during a Broadway play last year: "Will you turn off that (expletive) phone, please?"

Whew!  Love it!

And an understandably frustrated comedian tells the story of an audience member who not only answered his ringing phone, but then shushed the comedian so he could hear the caller better!

Also, I will buy anything sold my a merchant who has a sign up saying "I will be happy to serve you when you are off your cell phone."  I am usually behind the person who is chatting with Mom, sister Sally, hubby, the nurse of the gastroenterologist who did their colonoscopy last week, their ex-spouse, you name it, and also asking questions about and placing an order for seven different sandwiches.  "Is the Swiss cheese thin sliced?" "Ma, I can't pick up your dry cleaning." "What kind of mustard do you use?"  "Are the chips plain or wavy?" "Hold on Ma, I gotta order sandwiches," "Can I get the bread toasted on two of the sandwiches?"  "Ma I can't come over until after 6 o'clock!"

As my friend Tony would say -- I can either go to the "Happy Place" in my head, or kill the person. I'm quite sure, however, any jury would see it as justifiable homicide.

More recently, I was stunned when a fellow passenger on a flight I was on seemed to view the directive about not making phone calls on airplanes in flight as optional.

Really?  I mean, really?!

On a flight from Washington, soon after the pre-landing announcement was made, the woman next to me casually reached down into her purse, pulled her phone out, and started dialing.

I was dumbfounded, and I blurted out -- "What are you doing?"

She looked at me, slightly miffed, and said "Calling me husband, if it's any of your business."

"You're not supposed to use your phone till we land!" I sputtered.

"What are you, the phone police?" she shot back, and then chatted -- quietly -- with her husband about where to pick her up!

Okay, if Alec Baldwin got tossed off a plane for playing Scrabble on his phone before take-off, I wanted this woman thrown off at 10,000 feet. But, none of my fellow passengers seem to have seen or heard her, and I knew she would deny it if I tattled on her to a flight attendant. But boy I wanted to. (Seriously, I do not have anger management issues!)

And speaking of flight attendants, on another bus to Boston a couple of years back, a flight attendant in uniform, provided the entire bus with an animated, likely exaggerated, and at times steamy overview of her dating life as she chatted away on her cell phone. One woman passenger slapped her husband on the head when he turned around to get a better look at this self-professed sex kitten.

Who are these people!

The sense of me, me, me of these cell phone freaks is astounding. One staunch cell phone user summed up their attitude in a news article.  "People should give cell phone users a break and quit slamming them," said Dina Medina of San Francisco. "Cell phones are a fact of life, are not going away and actually help improve people's lives."

Argh.....

Call me Carnac folks, there will be some kind of court action soon involving cell phone rage.

Go ahead, defense lawyer, try to find 12 people sympathetic to your client. Hah!