PICAYUNE —
Don’t call me on my cellphone. I won’t answer.
Last week, I did what I’ve been threatening to do for years. I threw that slippery eel of a nuisance away. I had lived five decades without one. Why was I stuck with something I hated now?
Every time I met a car heading straight toward me in my lane with the driver oblivious and talking on the phone, I swore to get rid of my own cellphone. Every time some shopper in Wal-Mart bumped into me as she was explaining, loudly, to her phone that she was, well, in Wal-Mart shopping, I vowed I’d get rid of mine.
Once while I was giving a speech, a cellphone rang. That was bad enough. The man answered it and began a loud and inane conversation. I thought that day, enough was enough.
There is no escaping civilization now. People carry the blamed things on boats and into amusement parks. Those silly customized rings go off in movie theaters and nice restaurants. And when they do, everyone in the building starts slapping his pocket to make sure it isn’t his phone.
When did we all start having so much to say? What changed besides technology? Remember the days when you lived them, then went home and relived them with your spouse and family face to face?
I realize that I’m only hearing half the conversation when I am forced to listen to others on their cellphones. Unavoidable eavesdropping, I like to call it.
But I’ve never once overheard anything that resembled a profound thought, or even an urgent one. Instead you hear endless recaps of ordinary actions. We have become relentless narrators of our own boring lives.
“I’m at the Piggly Wiggly on the baking aisle. I can’t remember if I’m out of sugar. Maybe I’ll just buy some anyway.”
Fascinating stuff.
While I’m on this rant, I should say that people in general talk too much. That’s why nobody knows anything. If we’d listen more, talk less and process thoughts before spewing them into the ether, the world would be a more informed and tolerable place.
The older I get, the quieter I strive to be. It seems reasonable to me to retreat to the private cell of your own thoughts when you get past a certain point.
On the eve of some new telephone release last week, people slept in the street to be first in line to get the contraption. I’m not sure what exactly this phone will do besides call another one. Possibly wash and hang out dainties, or feed the family pet.
Reports of a new tsunami of talking headed our way depressed me. I could envision clerks who never look up to help a customer, spouses who never look into one another’s eyes, drivers with no hands free for the steering wheel, picnics with telephones instead of ants, children watching movies instead of playing tag and some stranger somewhere telling me and the rest of the world her private business.
That was what tore it. Don’t call me on your fantastic, expensive, new-fangled cellphone. Because mine is history.
(To find out more about Rheta Grimsley Johnson and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com.)
Opinion
Signing off from using cell phone
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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