In the middle of our phone conversation Lisa said to me, “Bing’s hair is on fire.” She said that about my son-in-love because, “He’s talking to me.” When she was young, my eldest daughter learned from her parents the lesson of patience, and the avoidance of unnecessary interruption. In the decades that preceded the ubiquity of cell phones, most of the people in this country conducted their inter-home communications via phones that were attached to cords. Our service was provided by some version of Ma Bell, and we purchased a separate machine to capture messages delivered when we were not at home to answer the “Bell” phone. My bride and I told our daughter that she was not to interrupt us when we were on the phone, unless her hair was on fire.
These days, a much smaller number of people have corded phones in their homes, having opted to have a cell phone as their only telephonic device. Years ago, I was talking on my cell phone while walking to work when a man interrupted me. “ ‘Scuse me. ‘Scuse me, sir.” I pointedly ignored him (he was a well-known panhandler that I had refused to “change” before), but he ignored my pointedness and continued to demand my attention. I finally turned and barked at him: “I’m on the PHONE!” This was early in the days of cell phone use for me, and I was irritated that someone would be so rude as to interrupt another person’s private phone conversation. But now, of course, no cellphone conversation is private. People put their phones on speaker and bark into it, trying to out-loud the loudness around them. I do not speakerphone my conversations in public, but I cannot count the number of times that I been approached by someone and asked a question while I have my phone to my ear. Rather than signal to the intruder that I am busy by pointing to the phone, I just turn away and continue speaking into it.
I am not unaware of the possibilities of the need to assist in an emergency in my world; if I am on my phone and someone runs up to me screaming that Timmy has fallen into the well, I will sign off immediately and go to render aid. If I see two trains on a collision course on the same track, I will drop my phone and run to wave down the engineers. I am not hard-hearted; I will stop a conversation to help a confused tourist find the local coffee shop, or to point the way to a nearby park. But so many people have become so inured to the sight of the hand lifted to the ear, and the aimless and endless conversations that flow into the device, that they do not consider it a rudeness to interrupt.
When I told my daughter that she should not interrupt me when I am on the phone except when her hair was on fire, she understood that the interruption was discourteous, a social faux pas. The days of that kind of consideration have apparently passed into extinction, and I mourn the death of those overt demonstrations of civility. Of course, we feed the fires of the funeral pyre on which burns our cares and considerations for others, by demanding immediate attention from friends and strangers around us who are ostensibly busy with someone else at the other end of a phone call.
My son-in-love may have missed the point Lisa was making, and though it doesn’t seem possible, I guess that everyone’s hair is on fire, these days.
CORRECTION: In “The Confluence of Joyful Things” in the July 26 issue, C.J. wrote that the Allegheny and Susquehanna Rivers join to form the Ohio; that is wrong. It is the Allegheny and the Monongahela.
cjon3acd@att.net