" The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please.�
I want to sing like Paul Westerberg, but I can't do that unless I'm alone. I can't be loud while someone's watching me, and I don't think my roommate would appreciate me getting out the old acoustic while she's reaching for her shut-eye.
It will have to wait until tomorrow, when I�ve got some �me time�.
-Segue-
Yesterday I was sitting in a jazzy coffee shop, drinking a gigantic mocha and reading an excellent book all about Terry Gilliam when my mother called.
This is the usual thing, we check up at least every weekend just to see how much hasn�t happened.
So I was talking to my mother about how much hadn�t happened, and the woman sitting directly in front of me kept diverting her attention away from all the college texts spread out in front of her to crane her neck around and eyeball me.
This happened several times, although I avoided noticing each time as I was trying to side-step her eventual interruption.
Normally I would think it rude to sit in a coffee shop and gab away on my cell phone, but this was an extraordinarily crowded and noisy coffee shop and I was certainly speaking lower then the general ambient chatter. Still, I would have been perfectly respectful if she asked me to keep it down.
She didn't do that.
"Excuse me, can I just tell you something?"
Let me guess, I have beautiful eyes? My voice sounds just like someone you know? You couldn't help overhearing my conversation and you'd like to offer me advice on how to turn around my dead-end career?
"I'm just trying to study here alone, and...do you know that your phone is pouring out EMF waves?"
I could tell this was going to take a moment, so I excused myself from the conversation with my mother.
She went on to tell me about how some distant friend of hers had a cell tower put up in their building and then some girl died of a brain tumor a year later. The implied connection was apparently both obvious and sinister.
I had never even considered the dangers of second-hand cellphone use.
I tried to explain to her that everything around her gives of an electromagnetic field, from simple light to errant microwaves, our world is thick with radiation. Even the walls inside your typical coffee shop give off electromagnetic fields, so my cell phone was of no more danger to her then a common television set.
She continued as if I hadn�t said a word.
�I saw this 20/20 episode with the guy from Virgin Atlantic airlines, and he said he won�t even use a cell phone without one of those ear things because his best friend got a brain tumor and they found it in his head right where he used to hold the phone to his ear.�
She continued to jump through half-remembered reports from vague Scandinavian countries that show the links between cancer and cell phone usage, and shadowy details about how the cellular industry was conspiring to hide all the evidence from the public.
Instead of coming to some sort of conclusion or wrapping up her point, she simply stopped talking. It was if she had finished the conversation inside her head while neglecting to let me in on the ending.
Apparently, she just ran out of things to say, presenting an interesting moment of silence between us. Her goal was to tell me that she would prefer not to be exposed to the imposing evil of my cellular communication, but she never quite managed to express that point. I just continued to stare at her blankly, eventually causing her to shrug and turn back to her books.
Taking stock of the situation, I found that my coffee was gone and so I gathered my things and left.
I spent the next few minutes strolling through union square while finishing my conversation with my mother. Try as I might, I couldn�t quite express to her how completely confounded I felt after the aforementioned confrontation.
I tried to explain how a person can be randomly confronted with the most bizarre things in this city, but I don�t think she quite got the idea.
This is the point where I came across a twelve-foot high model of the Eiffel tower made of drinking straws.
