It’s Wednesday morning, and I am driving my oldest to school. It doesn’t matter that it’s Wednesday. It could be any day. It is any day. Before we even get to the car he is gone, off into a galaxy that I am not allowed to enter, the tiny white headphones stuck into his ears as he tosses his backpack and baseball bag into the back seat. No sooner does he sit down beside me when his pocket starts buzzing and out pops the cell phone, his fingers tapping frantically to an invisible stranger who has now joined our morning commute.
I’m getting aggravated already and we haven’t even pulled out of the driveway. So much for scintillating discussions about the failure of the economy, the impact of global warming on the Emperor penguin or the unique movement of the four seam fastball.
Where’s Ram Das when you need him?
“Can’t you just unplug for a little while?” I ask, knowing full well what the answer will be. He glares at me and reluctantly pulls out the headphones one ear at a time, in a measured drama worthy of an Academy Award nomination. I may have won this battle, but his look reminds me that the war is ongoing.
One Christmas many years ago, when the four of us had thought we had finished opening up all the presents under the tree, we found a package sitting at the top of the stairs that led to our bedrooms. It caught our attention, not by its brightly colored Christmas wrappings, but because it was doing something that none of our other presents had done. It was ringing.
It was a pale blue phone with a rotary dial and a really long cord. It was our lifeline and we spent many an hour gabbing with friends about life, homework assignments and more importantly, who was going out with whom. We talked until there was nothing left to say, and then we talked some more. It was, after all, what teenagers did.
But there was a big difference. It stayed attached to the wall. It did not go with us to Grandma’s house, tucked in the back seat of the Country Squire station wagon or nestled in the pocket of our jean jacket as we wandered down the frozen food isle of the Grand Union. It did not double as a camera or a record player or a portable typewriter. It was a phone. Just a phone.
Prehistoric? Perhaps.
I returned to the classroom a few years ago, after a 10-year absence and was surprised when I noticed students tapping away on their cell phones during a lecture. Surely they weren’t taking notes. Was there a fire? An emergency? I was flabbergasted. Weren’t they supposed to be paying attention?
Several weeks later as I sat correcting research papers, I noticed that I was having a bit of difficulty deciphering their words. Cryptic codes lept off the page. Their meaning escaped me. I knew it had been quite some time since I had been in the classroom, but it hadn’t been that long, had it? Things seemed strangely different, as though I had entered an alien land where, despite a resemblance to the world I once knew, I quickly realized that I had not been there before. Who were these creatures and what was this strange language I had stumbled upon?
Welcome to the 21st century where the word multi-tasking has taken on new meaning. Distractions. Lack of focus. Short attention spans and despite so many ways to connect, an inability to communicate.
Multi-tasking used to mean doing laundry and cooking dinner at the same time. I check my email and listen to music on my cell phone, simultaneously. I hardly ever carry cash and I admit to lusting after hybrid vehicles. But despite the seduction of technology, I am truly a dinosaur.
I prefer to read the newspaper at the kitchen table with my cup of coffee in hand. I love pouring through old albums of photos that have yellowed with age. I’d rather receive a handwritten note than an email greeting and despite the ability to do many things on my iPhone, I still mostly use it for phone calls.
And nothing but nothing can take the place of a good ‘old fashioned conversation.
“Be here now,” wrote Ram Dass in his 1971 classic. Will our kids know how?