The Glazed Wall

So in my "About jey" page, I say that I don't mind people texting while on the bus. And I don't. But I do think it's a hilarious new norm.

I'm a suburban kid. If I had grown up in the city, I'd have seen what riders would have done without phones and Kindles and headphones worth $5. It may have looked sorta like what I saw today, but I'll never know.

Just about every single person's face is glued to a phone screen. Almost literally (I wish though, because that'd be hilarious).

And if they aren't looking at it, they're listening to something through headphones that suck their minds out their eardrums. They just stare listlessly into space.

To be clear, even if they weren't doing these things, I wouldn't want to talk to any of them. That's just not my jam, talking to strangers on a bus after work. So I understand the reasoning behind it. The dude sitting behind me just wants to relax and watch slasher films on his iPad, screams busting out his headphones, while the girl next to me shifts uncomfortably and continues cooing into the phone with whomever on some other bus (Oh, so her face was totally glued to the screen, HAH).

I get it. They have other things to do.

Me. I bet they're making all kinda wayward judgements of me too. I'm sitting there, super awkward, because those chairs can never be comfortable, and I sometimes scribble in a notebook, or I'm struggling to stay awake and my face keeps zigzagging across my chest like I'm trying to draw a figure eight with a pen in my mouth. To each her own.

I do, however, enjoy the off-chance that someone wants to strike up a conversation with me. It's a rare thing but enjoyable; perhaps because of its spontaneity and scarcity.

I wonder how consistent this aspect of nature is, though. I hardly think it's a phenomenon of technology. I mean, if everyone were just sitting there, I wouldn't try and talk to any of them. I like to daydream and that doesn't require teamwork. There's a lot of hubbub (here is where I cite evidence that you believe) that technology is killing people's ability to actual communicate with one another.

Well, maybe for some people, but my mouth isn't in a constant state of motion anyway, which leads me to believe people weren't made to always talk to each other. They pick and choose. It just so happens that now they're choosing to do more entertaining things because they can. I think that's fair. No need to force it.

So, there's my spiel on human disconnectedness. It is what it is. If you want it, you can try for it, but you may get shot down. Oddly, I think that happened even before people had phones.