Something Worth Railing About

To celebrate our 29 years of wedded bliss, Goody Two Shoes and I went out yesterday evening to a local restaurant, D'Atri's. They've been around a long time and are sort of iconic in our area. The specialty is steak subs & cheese steak subs, but they also serve a wide variety of other dishes, especially Italian cuisine. D'Atri's doesn't take reservations, so you queue up and wait for a table. After a 20 minute wait we were shown to a table in the loft.

Now, I told you all that to tell you this. We we're barely into our meal when two young couples were seated at a table just over Goody Two Shoes right shoulder. From my seat I was afforded an unobstructed view of the foursome. Less that sixty seconds after taking his seat, one of the group whips out his cell phone, presumably to see if he's missed a call or text message. EXCUSE ME! You're out on a date, Moron! Pay attention to the pretty young thing sitting next to you and the other couple as well. Or is that concept too hard to grasp. (Deep, calming breaths here)

Okay, I'm better now. Okay, so boyfriend #1 has to check his phone. Who knows, he could have been a surgeon...nah, he looked like he could barely manage a steak knife, let alone a scalpel. Seeing this, I make a mental note and go back to my meal. Two bites later I look up and there's his girlfriend with her cell phone up to her ear yammering a mile a minute. Before I judge to quickly I should give her the benefit of the doubt; maybe her grandmother is sick, or some other emergency has happened. No, she's laughing and talking to her dinner guests, while talking into the phone. Oh well, so much for the emergency theory.

So while the girlfriend is going yadda yadda yadda, the boyfriend whips out his phone to check for missed messages again. Now, as all this is going on, four women are seated at the table to my immediate left. Turns out it is a mother, her two daughters and a friend of one of her girls. All four are blond, but we won't hold that against them. Sure enough, less than a minute after sitting down, one of the girls whips out her pink cell phone and flips it open like Spock calling the Enterprise. I just wish someone would have beamed her up.

So, she checks her messages and puts the phone away...for about five minutes. As soon as the waiter took their orders, this bleached blond bubble head whips out her communicator and...are you ready for this...begins to play a game. (Major league caveman grunt here, along with stifled urge to reach across the aisle, snatch her phone, and toss it out the nearest window.) Seeing this, her sister begins to feel left out and requests a turn. And she gets it! The next time I looked over, little sister is playing with the phone. What the....

Looking back to the other table, the boyfriend has his phone out again and is texting someone. At this point I feel totally stupid, here Goody Two Shoes and I went out to eat and enjoy each other's company. Silly me, I guess we should have taken our cell phones with us so we could text across the table to each other. Oh, wait...we don't own a cell phone. Check please!

What is the point of my rant? Could it be that I despise these infernal contraptions? Not at all, I like the idea. They make perfect sense in an emergency situation. However, they make no sense when your in a restaurant, the checkout line at the market, or Wally World. (That's Wal Mart to those of you who don't get my humor) They have no place in the theatre, or at a school program, or church. Yes, I have heard them go off in all these places. Oh, pa-leeeease! What can these people possibly have to say to one another that can't wait until church is out, the movie is over, or they come home from the store? The answer...NOTHING. It's all about YADDA, YADDA, YADDA. Talking and jabbering for the sake of making noise.

I have three children whom I love very much and they all have cell phones. My son uses his while he drives (God's gonna get you, boy) When talking face to face, he has tuned me or his mother out to take a cell phone call, so have my daughters. EXCUSE ME! I'm here, live and in person. Your @#$*&! phone will take a message, I don't. Talk to me, say what needs said, then go and YADDA YADDA YADDA to your heart's content. Oh, and let's not forget texting. My girls could make the Olympic texting team. Bloop, beep, beep, bleep, boop, ticka, ticka, tick, beep.... Talk about a distracting noise while your driving and you hear this coming from the back seat.

As I mentioned, I love my children, but cell phones have made them lazy. Case in point, Dimples, who is now 22 and an expectant mother, was home one afternoon (our home, not hers) For a time she and I sat in the living room and had a nice chat, and I did my best to ignore her checking her &*$# phone every five minutes. Meanwhile, her little sister, the Wild Child, is upstairs in her room. She hears her big sister and myself talking. So what does this seventeen year old ball of dynamite do? She texts her big sister, who is sitting eight feet under her in the living room. WHAT?!!! I've seen some pretty silly things in my life, but this one took the cake. And not only did Dimples text her back, but they repeated the process several times. After the third time, I gave up trying to have a conversation, went outside, and lay down in the middle of the street.

In closing, I have to defend Dimples. She doesn't have a land line phone in her apartment, only her cell phone. So, having a cell phone, in her case, makes sense. But wait! She can't get a signal inside, so she has to go out on the front porch to take a call, or make a call.

Again, I ask. What's the point? Answer...its all about the YADDA YADDA YADDA. Now, if you'll excuse me I have a call coming in. On a land line. HA HA HA! See you all in the funny papers.