I have a soap box to stand on this morning. Perhaps I may be a bit hypocritical in writing this, because I surely am not without guilt in this same area of discussion... but I have a pet peeve...
Last Saturday night a group of family members went to PF Changs in Salt Lake to celebrate my mom's birthday. It was a typical Saturday night at a restaurant- date nights, friends at dinner for one reason or another- ya know- the norm. But I made an observation that continues to disturb me.
As we were being seated I looked around at the groups of people surrounding us. Some young, some old - there were LOTS of people in the restaurant that night. I instantly noticed a distinct difference in the atmosphere at the tables of specific age groups. Any member of a table, and I am not exaggerating, under the age of thirty, sat in their seats glaring at their phones. Texting, playing games, checking email... whatever they were doing, they were DEFINITELY not paying attention to each other. From those tables there were no sounds of jabber or laughter- just clickclickclickclickclickclickclick. Oh, and occasionally someone would snicker over a received text message.
On the other hand, the groups of "older" (and I do use that term lightly...) people were smiling and laughing, and lo and behold, I saw not ONE cell phone!
The whole scenario just disturbed me, and it reminded me of a time, about two years ago, when a friend of mine called me out when I was having a "younger generation" moment:
She was visiting from Boston. There were three of us sitting around a table, laughing and reminiscing and having a great time, but for a few minutes, I got distracted by some text messages. I tuned out of the conversation going on at the table (though I pretended, of course, to still be listening with some "yeahs" and nods of the head and the occasional courtesy laugh...) when all of a sudden I noticed the silence. Chelsea simply said to me, "Really? I see you like once every few years now and the text on the phone is more important to you than the people in front of your face?"
Point taken. And I was grateful for it.
So, in conclusion, the other night I wanted to be like Chelsea and yell to all those PF Changs people, "HELLO!!!!! PAY ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE YOU ARE WITH!!!"
Why is reality never as exciting and engaging as the virtual in our world? It totally annoys me.
The end.
