Keep It in Your Pants

Remember when people used to experience things, back before there were cell phones? When you went to a concert, you held up your lighter as a sign of respect. If you were at the movies, you watched the film with the people you went with and ate your popcorn and slurped your Slurpee. When you went to dinner, you conversed with your family while you waited for your food to be served, hoping your little ones would be entertained enough with some crayons and free bread until the meal arrived. If you went to the theater, you watched the performers, letting the magic of live entertainment enthrall you. Back in the day, you were present in the moment.

Nowadays, our society has lost its manners along with its attention span. I am guilty of it too, of being too distracted with my phone to notice what is happening around me. We recently had a few people over for dinner, and after the meal was over, we all retired to the living room to chat and drink and watch football. I immediately pulled out my phone to see what I had missed during the meal, and after I had made my app rounds, I looked up and noticed that six out of the eight of us on the couch were doing the exact same thing. We were all happy to be together, as far as I could tell, and yet there we were, isolating ourselves by looking into the palms of our hands instead of one another.

While it’s both irritating and embarrassing to be that person with the phone, at least I know when to put the damn thing away. A few weeks ago, I went to our local theater twice in the same week. The first time was with my husband. We had tickets to see a Broadway musical that was on a national tour. The tickets were pricey, and the crowd was appropriate and well-mannered enough to wait until intermission to do the obligatory phone check. After all, we all paid a pretty penny for those seats. Plus, I am pretty sure they gave the standard no videotaping/no flash photography pre-show warning. Other than the sea of screens in a fifteen minute window, I didn’t see a single phone out during the performance, and frankly, I was impressed.

Compare that to the show I went to two nights later. It was the national tour of So You Think You Can Dance, and I along with my friend, EL, and my daughter, S, were pretty excited to see the finalists from the television show on which we were all hooked during the summer. This was a very different crowd, a lot of young women, a few young men, and even some families with girls around my daughter’s age who were also big fans of the show. Unlike the Broadway musical, this show did not ban the use of cell phones during the performance, so a whole bunch of people figured that meant they could do whatever the hell they wanted.

The two ladies next to us decided that instead of watching the show with their eyes, they would observe it entirely through their phone screens while taping almost every performance. They were not subtle at all; in fact, one of them insisted on using her flash the entire time, lighting up about four people in the row in front of her in an otherwise darkened theater. I am sure she was not the only person who was that brazen in her filming efforts, but she was the only one near me, and it took all the self-control I had not to knock the goddamn phone out of her hand hard enough to send it careening over the edge of the balcony to the floor below. Her like-minded theater companion not only had the biggest phone I have ever seen this side of a tablet, but she was also wearing one of those douchey Samsung smart watches.  Either she worked at Best Buy or she had to have the latest device, and the bigger the better. She too felt the need to record every performance and view it through her phone instead of actually watching the show.  

I just don’t get it. Why watch it on your phone when you can look up and see it right in front of you? Also, how many times did they plan on watching it again? It was a good show, but it wasn’t that good. I didn’t feel like I needed to see it again. Hell, I already saw most of it when it was on television. After a while, all those dance performances start to look the same. I can’t imagine sharing what I had taped with anyone else. I can barely get people to watch the funny videos I post on Facebook. Why would I force them to watch what is, in essence, someone else’s dance recital?

The ladies next to us reminded me of people who videotape fireworks. There’s another annoying thing that people do that I just don’t understand. If you have seen one firework show, you have seen them all. Things shoot up in the air, there is a loud boom, and an array of colorful sparks fall to the ground. Little children, dogs, and veterans are scared, teenagers are bored, and parents are already angry with the traffic. Who wants to see all of that again? Hey, kids, let’s watch July fourth of 2007 after dinner tonight! That was a great year.

Those two women on one side of us were hardly the only offenders. Throughout the audience, phones were held high, aglow with discourteous bootlegging. I am sure surrounding each phone was a small group of irritated patrons who also wanted to smash things. The only person who I saw that was using his phone in a completely considerate yet rude fashion was the man to EL’s left. He was at the show, along with his overly enthusiastic wife and two teenage daughters, and obviously, that whole night at the theater was not his idea. He was an interesting fellow, bald and probably in his forties, yet dressed in a very urban, youthful, almost hip way, with nice skinny jeans, expensive leather lace up boots, sweater vest, fitted dress shirt, and even a felt fedora and overcoat.  The hat was the most important part of his outfit.

The minute the theater dimmed the lights, he placed the hat on his lap, then his phone inside his hat, and there, under the cover of his felt hipness, he texted like a fiend. He checked up on news. He updated Facebook. He answered email. For the entire show, he crossed and uncrossed his legs, trying to stay comfortable while keeping himself totally occupied on his barely hat hidden iPhone. It was the most polite inconsiderate thing I had ever seen.

Don’t get me wrong, his behavior was distracting, but damn, I admired his technique. I also was more than a little curious about what demanded so much of his attention inside of that hat. I caught myself several times glancing across EL to see what he was doing. I am sure he started by texting someone how much he didn’t want to be there. I imagined it continued to some pretty heavy flirting. I mean, he was lost in that fedora, and if you could tune out the weird inappropriate howling and loud music and horribly positioned stage lights that were frequently blinding, it had to be some good shit.

My point is, put away the phone. If you can live without it while you sleep, you can manage a couple of hours at the movies or the forty-five minutes it takes you to eat a meal. None of us is the president; nothing is so urgent in our world that it can’t wait a little bit longer to be addressed. You can always answers your texts when you go to the bathroom, the way God and Steve Jobs intended.