Now that’s just crazy talk.
Cut him some slack. He’s old.
I just wanted to let off steam here, rather than have an argument with him.
We’ve been friends a long time and I didn’t want to lose that over one small annoyance.
So thanks for your comments, which helped a lot. 
Rudeness requires intent, methinks, and that is one option. Equally possible options, not knowing the details, are:
- didn’t hear you because he’s hard of hearing
- didn’t hear you because texting requires his full focus
- didn’t hear you because you mumble/whisper/faced away when talking
- had no idea it had been that long, he was just sending one text to his DIL
In other words, fugetaboutit!
Nah, simple apathy works too.
If you intentionally bump into people or step on their toes, that’s rude.
If you unintentionally bump into people or step on their toes, and don’t apologize or care that you’ve done so, that’s still rude.
If you keep someone else waiting unnecessarily and unapologetically, that’s rude, whether or not you’re doing so deliberately.
Is this late enough in the thread to comment: Who texts their DIL for 20 minutes?
My elderly friend is a very slow typist.
I wasn’t serious with that question. My aging parents take 20 minutes just to report the past week’s weather to me.
The only acceptable answer is take his phone away, take his license away, and put him in a old folk’s home. Problem solved.
Yes it was rude. Is this common of him?
Problem solved? Not so fast. Who gets his car?
Because old people, more than anyone, should be more keenly aware of the limited number of minutes in a life. If he was really old I’d say it was passive aggressive.
I agree. And if you set out saying rudeness needs to be willful, you’re going to end up reading bad motives into people’s actions which might not exist, because their rudeness still impacts you whether intentional or not, and you’ll be looking to blame them.
There’s no problem with simultaneously being annoying by somebody’s rudeness and recognizing they didn’t ‘mean anything by it’ in an active sense, just weren’t thinking or just didn’t care about you. The latter isn’t good, it’s better to have some genuine concern for others, but still not the same as doing things on purpose to piss people off.
On OP question I think if you’re a stickler for manners you could read it both ways. The older friend shouldn’t have kept OP waiting, but it wasn’t polite of OP necessarily either to ask what the text was just because it held up OP.
And, really 20 minutes literally?
Yes. A friend and I planned to meet recently so I could return a tool I had borrowed. I arrived at the bar right on time, but he was twenty minutes late. Since he was nice enough to lend me the tool, I didn’t complain about his late arrival. Good thing too; he left just before me and paid my tab along with his.
As I said, I just asked “Is everything OK?”
I was concerned that there might be illness or other bad news.
(My friend has had a triple heart bypass and needs to avoid stress.)
Yes, literally 20 minutes.
We were in a village, so I looked at the allotments, the pub menu, then read all the notices on the village hall noticeboard.
Normally he’s pretty considerate.
He is set in his ways (but then so am I!)
We always split the cost of dinner.
Since he drives, I buy the drinks.
Yes, he was rude, or maybe thoughtless. He can’t handle technology because he is a clueless old codger.
I would cut him some slack, but I am myself a clueless old codger. And we’re cranky.
I would have given the phone to my daughter. That girl can tap out the complete text of War and Peace faster than I can figure out how to spell lol. And all my texts take longer to type, because, well…
Regards,
Shodan