walking home from a medical appointment this evening, i thought “everything is against the law now,” after reading about two states (NY and IL) trying to criminalize the act of text messaging while walking. (while WALKING, mind you, not while driving or flying an aircraft. walking. for fear you might bump your little head on a telephone pole.) (oh wait, there aren’t any telephone poles any more.) (there aren’t? when did they go away?) (around the same time cassette walkmen vanished.) (in any event the walking texters are bumping their distracted bodies into some fucking thing or other.)
and then i thought myself to be exaggerating, as i am sometimes known to do, and said no, even though we live in a country where it is illegal to cause someone pain while you are executing them it doesn’t therefore follow that absolutely everything is against the law.
after all, if everything was against the law then so would overloading my to-do list be against the law, and i would not be allowed to handle it as poorly as i have this last week (weeks? months!) and it would not have been eight days since this blog was updated, would it? no, when i get to working on my list i write it up as if i were rich and unemployed, adding every possible task i’d like to do for every one of my many ongoing projects. these lists make me happy! they have no conference calls or 1:1 meetings or spreadsheets or powerpoint presentations on them, no way! they are filled with twittering and songwriting and recording and blogbuilding and emceeing and performing and generating new creative writing. but then i have to go to the office. one of these should be illegal: either the thrilling making of lists that contain only things that inspire me, or otherwise the showing up at a job that’s filled with tasks that don’t inspire me — one of them has simply got to go, and anyone can see i’m far too undisciplined to make that happen on my own.
there should be a law! there’s a law for every other undisciplined thing — a fricking law about text messaging on the sidewalk for god’s sake — why not a law to save me from my own ambitions? (i almost wrote bottomless ambitions, but my ambitions are not the bottom of what i do, they are the top, the creative top — so are they then topless ambitions? not at my age.) anyway.
it is really nice out today, an august afternoon that feels like the best of september. walking home reminded me that it’s summertime for some people — kids are off school, the park is full of hanger-outers, toddlers and tweens and matriarchs all not jogging, not seeming to follow any agenda, not in a hurry about anything. i slowed down, taking all this in, forgetting about my lists. “ah,” i told me, “you’re just too pessimistic. everything isn’t against the law. this is america, land of the free!”
then i got home and learned that it is now illegal to scan your granny at walmart.
sigh.
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Honestly, I don’t think it’s so much about texters bumping into things as it is the fact that many, even most texters are not paying attention to anything or anyone around them while they’re texting.
Even worse are voice cell phone users. There’s more people using the phone in more rude ways than ever before and those in the ear bluetooth gadgets are making the matter even worse because you never know when someobdy is talking to you or to the blasted thing in their ears
i agree with you that random cell phone chatter is absolutely crazy-making.
i’m OK with people texting, though. here’s to innocuous obliviation!
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