I’ve been riding commuter trains for about 8 years now. The increased use of cellphones has definitely changed the way people interact with each other. In the past, people were almost forced to communicate with their seat neighbors in some form or other. This was usually in the form of casual small talk (work complaints, movies, sports, stock market, etc.). Now people chat away on their cellphones and, for the most part, ignore their neighbors. The cellphone has become a tool of separation. On the other hand, ironically, it also allows you to learn alot more about other people. As they’re talking on their mobiles, they sometimes forget that there are other people around who can listen (and are often forced to listen) to their every word. You learn alot of things that people wouldn’t typically reveal in casual conversation. I’ve heard people talking freely about marital infidelity, one-night stands, drug use and personal grooming.
But none of that was the point of this thread. I’m not even sure why I wrote it. But it makes sense, so I guess I’ll keep it in.
Anyway, here’s a funny quote I heard just the other day from one my my fellow commuters. This one really made me want to know the story behind the quote. I’m hoping some of you have you have your own to add.
“What?!?!? I told you that you shouldn’t have given him electric scissors.”
“You’re playing Jehovah. You’re playing Jehovah.”
The rest of this woman’s conversation started out hilarious then got creepy and then got sad.
It was in a Toys R Us right before closing so pretty much no one was there. I saw this woman basically yelling into her cellphone talking to her boyfriend. She started ranting about how she had changed and that she didn’t do “shit” like that anymore and how she had “given up drugs and drinking and sleeping around all for Jehovah.” Kind of hilarious. Then she went on to accuse the boyfriend of telling their children that she used to be a lesbian and had “eaten pussy!” At this point myself and two TRU employees are just watching her pace up and down this aisle. She then got louder and started accusing the boyfriend of “sucking cock before you got God.”
It got sad when I rounded a corner and saw her two children playing video games all within earshot of their mother.
“Yep. Uh huh. Uh huh. No. Mom, you do this every time! You suck the happiness out of everything make everything about you! That’s why we’re always in therapy!”
Honestly, and I know I’m going to sound like an old dinosaur here, but these posts are a big reason I have continued to resist getting a cell phone…I am flabbergasted by the shit that comes out of people’s mouths w/ others standing right next to them???
Is it really necessary to subject others to a totally inane conversation while you’re standing in line at a convenience store?!!?!? And the post about the whackjob at Toys R Us is just unbelievable!!!
One of the funniest things I’ve seen, and I’m not trying to be mean here, was a guy w/ a cell phone stuck up in his turban, just over his ear, and he was grocery shopping, like he had a hands free unit… :eek:
“If you’re not going to marry him, you need to tell him now!”
I also overheard a long conversation by a woman who wanted someone to “get right with Jesus.” She kept saying things like, “No, no, no, that’s because you’re not right with Jesus…That’s not being right with Jesus…None of that is going to happen until you get right with Jesus…”
Once, while sitting in the food court of a mall, I watched an expensively-dressed middle-aged woman take a cellphone out of her fancy designer handbag, dial a number, say in measured tones “You are a big poopyhead,” and hang up. This brief episode lingered in my memory. There’s got to be a story there, and I will never know what it is.
When Mrs. Plant called me in Kroger, I answered, “People are looking at me! What the hell do you want?”
I saw a rather attractive woman in Kroger, wearing jeans where the hem comes over the high heels and almost touches the floor. She had a toddler with her and was talking on the phone. “What am I trying to do? What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do, dipshit? I’m trying to find something you will eat!”
My first thought was that she wasn’t so good looking after all, the second was imagining the kid coming home, running to his Father, arms outstreatched and yelling, “Dipshit!”
I will admit that I probably gave the people sitting near me in the library the other day a good laugh. (For the record, the phone was on vibrate so I didn’t annoy people with it ringing, and it was in an area of the library for public computer use so talking is not discouraged.) One of my friends called to inform me about a rather interesting discovery he had made after another friend borrowed his laptop for an evening. But all the people next to me heard was…
“My God, how much porn can one person watch in a single night?!”
I was talking to a client on the phone about enlarging a bitmap image they had sent me; I said, “I had to blow it up four times!” This comment set off wild speculation among the listeners (middle school kids) as to what I had blown up.
cell phone rang during “Minute of silence” during Remeberance Day ceremony at local cenotaph. heard person answering with “Just unthaw it, and put it in the oven at 350… I will be home as soon as I am done with this shit I have to do…”
While going through a client’s consignment, she sat patiently in front of me, and we had pleasant, polite chit-chat as I explained why I was or wasn’t taking certain items. Her cellphone rang, and she stayed seated, looking prim but not uptight… it was kind of sweet, in some odd way. In some me way, I guess. So I was totally unprepared for, after a brief greeting, some small nodding, and patient listening, she suddenly replied to the person at the other end:
“Oh, yes, the monkey was a big hit in our household.”