One of the things that shocked me the most when I moved to Europe was the number of mobile phone users, and the number of times they seem to use them. I had not seen anything quite like it in the US. Possibly that was because I was not look- ing, or possibly the US had a better land-line infrastructure, and didn't swing over to mobile phone use as quickly and as all-pervasively as Europe did. (In the Netherlands, for example, it can take six months to get a land line, but only a few seconds to get a mobile.)
But it wasn't just the proliferation of mobiles that shocked me (and continues to), but the seem- ing *dependence* on them that people seem to have developed. On the streets, in restaurants, and even in theaters, people are on them *constantly*. It is almost impossible to have a dinner with someone without it being interrupted by a mobile phone call or five. And they *take* the phone calls. Call me an old fogey, but to me, that's just rude. They put "Off" buttons on these devices for a reason. This story today got me thinking about all of this, and the possibly *addicting* nature of "staying in touch." This article is about a father who found that his 13-year-old daughter made 13,528 text mes- sages a month. That is one message every two minutes for every one of her waking hours. http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/01/11/Girl_13_sends_14528_texts_in_a_month/UPI-83341231704427/ Now I ask you...isn't this a bit obsessive? Me, I tend to treasure my privacy. Yes, I have a mobile phone. But I have given that number to only ten people. If it rings, I know that it's one of them, and that I *might* just want to speak to them. I just don't DO "texting," and my 10 friends know this, so they don't bother with it. But when I walk the streets of Sitges or Barcelona and watch people bumping into each other or into lampposts because they're busy reading some text message or writing one, or walking in front of an oncoming bus because they are so lost in their phone conversation that they don't notice it, I start to wonder. Sometimes I kinda long for the days when you had to find a pay phone and plunk some money into it to "stay in touch" with people when you were away from home. It made "staying in touch" feel almost like a good thing, something you had the option to do or not. What I see on the streets and in rest- aurants and...well...pretty much everywhere else doesn't really strike me that way. I kinda wonder about people who are so uneasy being themselves that they have to "stay in touch" with other people 24/7, just to remember who they are.
