Common Courtesy on Hold

The Boston Herald

They were probably the nicest young women, good to their mothers, loyal to their friends, devoted to their pets. They were both pretty and cheerful and neat. But they never stopped talking. They sat not together but in their individual seats on a train on their way to New York, two strangers, but with more in common than they knew.

Neither of them, for even one minute, got off her cell phone.

It was a Saturday, which is maybe why. Free minutes beg to be used. The girl with the dark curly hair called everyone she knew. "What's up?" she began as the train was pulling out of Westwood. And all the way to New York it was the same thing: "Are you serious?" "Definitely" and "That's so funny!" Giggle. Giggle. "So what else is new?" Click. More clicks. And then it began again.

Behind her, a blonde with straight hair also in her early 20s talked nonstop, too. This girl was a pro. She actually had a head set. She leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes and talked away.

I tried to read, really I did. But their words, "Did I tell you?" and their tone, "Get out!" and their laughter, giggles sometimes, guffaws at others, kept intruding. I could blackmail both of them with what I overheard. But all I wanted was for them to stop talking. 

On the trip home, I rode in the quiet car. Thank you, Amtrak. No cell phones allowed. No noisy electronic games, no loud conversations, no intrusive sound at all. You can actually hear the whistle of the wind and the hum of the train. In the words of my parents, words I swore I never would use, you can actually hear yourself think.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with cell phones as there was nothing intrinsically wrong with these two young women. They were just so focused on their wants and needs that they didn't have a clue that their behavior was impacting others.

When my children were small, I would ask them, "What if everyone in this movie theater started to talk as loud as you're talking?

Funny how quickly the kids understood.

At the Randolph movie theater a few weeks ago, a woman's cell phone rang not once, not twice but three times. And three times she answered it and, in a stage whisper everyone could hear, said, "I CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW. I'M AT THE MOVIES.”

You wonder, why didn't she just turn off the phone? You also wonder, why all of us didn't say "SHHH!" the first two times it rang.

What if every person at the movie had a phone that rang?

When we are children, adults teach us the little courtesies that make life better for everyone, like make sure you let people out of an elevator and off a bus before you push your way on. But then we grow up and we're on our own and along come new things like cell phones and it's literally Babel because no one is making any rules. 

Live theaters, concert halls and hospitals prohibit cell phones but everywhere else it's ring, buzz, some tinny variation of an old song followed by a loud, “Hello?"

We want to be accessible and connected. And so on buses and on trains and walking along or sitting in restaurants or killing time, we're on our phones.

There need to be rules. Maybe we could begin by cultivating telephone voices that are a few decibels lower than Timmy ringing up the switchboard operator in the old episodes of "Lassie." WHY DO WE SHOUT ON OUR CELL PHONES when we could talk normally or, better yet, whisper?

Or maybe what we really need are some phone-free places, more quiet cars not just on Amtrak but scattered through life.