Tattoos and Telephones

I was with a friend, a woman of 60, and four others, 60 to 75 years old, sitting under a parasol at a long rectangular table, chomping on hot dogs, sipping Coca-Cola and warm beer, talking about nothing in particular, when I made the mistake of offering a remark about sailors and tattoos vaguely apropos something somebody said.  Immediately, the conversation topic derailed onto the old  track of how awful these young people are nowadays.   Tattoos, cellphones and obnoxious music! Heaven help us! We were heard by other patrons sitting nearby in this outdoor cafe, and I felt so embarrassed for myself and the group, that I discreetly scooted over to the edge of the bench in a vain attempt  to show the accidental witnesses around us that I'm not with these people, I don't know them, I just happened to be sitting here.

At last, my friend rescued me, quite unexpectedly so, unexpectedly because I had known her to pick up another old folks talk theme in her conversations, that of exchanging complaints about one's aches and pains, and offering the names of pharmacological remedies, and so she rescued us this time by ordering in a commanding voice of a high school teacher, "Stop you all kvetching like a bunch of old people!"   After a brief silence, conversation returned  to the safe topic of nothing, and all was well again.

I was thinking about this incident the other day as I read Joseph Epstein's essay in the Weekly Standard "Toting the Dumb Phone".   Yes, Epstein, a noted critic and writer,  is old, and yes, he kvetches about young people and their smartphone cellphone mania,  but doesn't he make a few interesting points?

I own a cellphone that Mr Epstein would have described as a dumb homeless model, the number of which I don't remember,  known to only a handful of people, a cellphone that never rings, except as on two recent occasions when I'm in the company of someone whom I've just told that no, my cellphone never rings.

I sometimes bet myself five dollars walking down a busy street that for the next two blocks I won't see a young woman who's not talking or typing on her smartphone, and I often win and have to  transfer a five dollar bill from my left to the right jeans pocket.   But thinking some more about it, it occurred to me, that this new phenomenon of people, mostly women, on the phone in public places is perhaps not due to women's well known tendency to chat and talk endlessly,  but it is a fashion statement and a status symbol to be demonstrated to everyone around like a new hairdo or a pair of earrings.  Look, I can afford a smartphone, I have friends to talk to.