fake texting

Yesterday at 7:55pm I'm driving on the straightaway section of National Road by Greenwood Cemetery. There's these 2 kids. One of them is staring into his phone while walking down the middle of the left lane (following the intermittent white line). This idiot teenager was staring into his phone pretending to be distracted. A downright bizarre attention ploy. Having tried similar stunts back in the day, I know where of I speak. His normal friend was walking on the sidewalk.

My point... the kid was trying to play some form of "chicken" with oncoming cars. Pretending to be so engrossed in his texting conversation that he apparently lost track of his movement. It took me about 4 seconds to process everything. I was traveling about 40mph and heading in the same direction. After I figured it out, I debated turning around the car and yelling, "Hey, get out of the road you stupid piece of shit." I really should have but I didn't feel like turning around.

A few minutes later I gave it some additional thought. Yes, I know the kid was just pretending to be distracted and he surely would have gotten out of the way. But cars come flying up that hill and the kids were approaching that point. Every once in a while there's some drag racing asshole. And for the sake of Job and his mammoth whale companion, there are tons of elderly drivers in that area who don't see too well at dusk. What if one of them panicked and prematurely swerved? I think the kid was probably trying to mimic the behavior he has seen on MTV, a combination of the "you got punked/Jack Ass" vibe.

Maybe I should have gone back and bitched him out. At the very least, it would have made me feel better, but I declined. Perhaps I was thinking in Darwinian terms - "survival of the fittest" and I secretly was hoping the kid got run over. I just don't know. My hatred of cell phones has increased exponentially.

I've seen similar situations like these play out. Usually, it's a lone woman at a bar. If she has to sit by herself for even a brief second, she sticks her head in the phone. This way nobody will think she's a loser. The problem is, you can usually see right through this and mentally affix the name tag which reads "pathetic." Please, I beg you! Look at me! I'm obviously more important than you could ever fathom. All these people can't cease their desire to communicate with me via the text platform. And the information being conveyed is a matter of national security. Every single message is a tsunami of 9/11's.

"Just had yummy DQ sundae. HTC." Yep, that's the one I hate the most - HTC. Cool people known this means "Hit the cell." What the fuck is wrong with humanity? I can't be the only person who finds this irritating.

I'd love to see all cell phone reception knocked out by a solar flare or some unforeseen natural disaster. It would be amusing to see how the techno-dumbshits cope. Their make believe/virtual world suddenly compromised. Perhaps I'm jealous. Perhaps I'm funneling my disgust because I'm 40 and not as popular as I used to be. Perhaps not. I just can't stand it when that phone rings. And my little LG screen saver is still the same picture of an old lady casually strangling a cat in the Robinson Township Ikea. Maybe I just don't get it.

The problem is that I do get it. This obsession with cell phones. In the event of a series of artificially generated stampedes, we'll see just how cool all this texting nonsense is. Perhaps we could look to Mr. T. for a little guidance in a future government awareness campaign... "I pity the fool that texts all the time."

Ouch. Especially in the cold... "texting in the chilly weather."