March 8th, 2010
Why do we talk so loudly on cell phones?
I noticed the guy the moment I stepped out of the rest room in the Charlotte, NC, airport. He was young, tall, thin but that’s not the reason I hated him. I hated him because he was speaking into his cell phone in a voice so loud that he was drowning out the nearby jet engines.
It was late and I was pissed, especially when he wound up standing right behind me on the line to board the plane. He just kept it up, babbling like a f$#king idiot at a million miles an hour in that loud, grating voice. I was itching for a fight so I started saying very loudly, “Blah, blah, blah.”
Yes, I was being very mature but it didn’t really matter. No reaction from my newly-minted nemesis. I turned around and stared hard at the guy at least five times. Still nothing. He was oblivious, just going on and on about some stupid business deal I did not want to know anything about.
I always wonder about people like this. It was now 10 p.m. What in God’s name was so important that this guy was still negotiating business deals at this hour? And that’s what he was doing. He wasn’t whispering sweet nothings to his significant other. He wasn’t saying goodnight to a child. That I would have been okay with. But he was talking business, very loudly.
I really wanted to take his phone and make him eat it but I kept my cool, all the way down the jetway as he kept it up. There was a lot of talk about venture capital. I was rolling my eyes so far back into my head that I think I pulled one out of its socket.
I remember being in Paris last year which has cell phone service on Le Metro (thankfully NYC does not). Many Frenchmen and women were talking on their cell phones but even when I was close by, I couldn’t hear them. Is this loud talking on cell phones an American phenomena?
Finally we boarded the plane, and this guy did not take a breath. He was just kept right on, all the way into his window seat a couple of rows behind me. We sat for 15 minutes. He just kept talking. My teeth and nerves were on edge. I felt like shouting ‘bomb’ just to get off the plane. I silently thanked the FAA for not allowing the use of cell phones on planes.
But then something interesting happened. There was a moment of quiet, followed by an announcement by the flight attendant that “we have a passenger on the wrong plane.” Of course, this loud-talking idiot pushed his way out of the plane. I was sorry that he had realized he was on the wrong flight. If only he would have flown to the wrong city! Now that would have made me happy. As I settled into the sweet silence he left in his wake, I could only hope that he had missed his plane.