A few days ago I flipped through the channels and came about an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where the protagonist, Larry David, was alone in a restaurant, waiting for dinner. At the table next to him was a business man, also alone, Bluetooth earpiece active, talking loudly and gesticulating, he was clearly engrossed in a business conversation. He was obnoxious and clearly bothered everyone around him. Suddenly Larry started talking to himself, just as loud, making up an inane conversation. The business person next to him stopped his call, turned to Larry and asked him if he’d please stop since he couldn’t hear his own conversation. Larry cranked up the volume and even started a second, parallel conversation, playing as if he was putting one on hold while carrying on the other.  

I have been in many situations similar to that, where I found it outright rude that somebody was actually subjecting me and everyone else around him to his private conversation. The most glaring example is on airliners, right after landing. As soon as the plane is taxiing off the runway, 140 people turn on their cell phones or Blackberries. Some read the latest emails. But many, way too many, call somebody.

“Hi.”
“It’s me!”
“How are you?”
“Yeah, we just landed.”
“We just landed!” Yelling a little louder.
“No, I am still on the plane.”
“We’re not at the gate yet, we just landed.”
“No, I am still on the plane. I’ve got to get off first.”
“Ok.”
“Bye.”

Was that conversation necessary? There are probably a dozen or so of this nature going on within earshot after landing. What is the point? Another two minutes, and they could have had the conversation while walking down the concourse. At least nobody else would have had to listen to it. And another two minutes later they could have met their rides and they didn’t need to have the conversation at all.

When I listen to phone calls all around me, in airplanes and in restaurants, I come away with the clear feeling that 99% of all cell phone calls are full of inane drivel. People call people because they can, not because they have anything to say.

I don’t care for government regulation of any type, but I am thankful to the FAA for not allowing cell phone calls during flight. I simply cannot imagine being trapped for several hours surrounded by people spewing their private and pointless conversations all around them.

Perhaps we should all throw away our cell phones, without replacing them. After all, 99% of our calls do not appear to be necessary.

Last school year was the first one that both kids were in college at San Diego State. We moved to Kensington, close to college, so we’d be close by. Every Sunday at 10:00 we hosted a breakfast and the kids had a standing invitation.  Often both were here, sometimes only one of them, and occasionally one or the other brought a friend.

The “tradition” lasted for only one year, since both kids are now waiters and generally they work the Sunday morning shifts in their respective restaurants. The kids are a year older, and I realize that my time with them is now very limited and hard to come by. The old song “Cat’s in the Cradle” is about this.

I recall the years when I “had the kids” on the weekends to give their mom a break. Those seemingly endless visits to the park or the playground, or up to Palomar Mountain for a picnic or hike, were precious jewels of time I was given. At the time I didn’t realize their preciousness. Now they are distant memories.

Even the regular Sunday Brunch at Dad’s is now a tradition of the past, lasting only a year, comprised of only a dozen or two actual events. I am grateful for every one of them.

Not long ago I went into a Verizon store to buy a new charger for my cell phone. My phone is two or three years old. It does not have a camera – I already have one and I don’t need one in my phone. It’s just a phone, that’s all, and that’s all I want it to be.

I must sound like an old guy – well, I am 51.

So the girl behind the counter, she could not be older than 19, checks her inventory on the computer and finds that they don’t have a charger for my phone. I am not surprised.

Incidentally, I could gripe on and on about the obscene practice of phone manufacturers changing the power adaptors between models of phones, so we all keep having to buy chargers for $29.95, which are really $1.75 worth of wire and plastic, made in China. I must have bought more phone power adaptors over the years than any other technology gear ever.

When the girl can’t sell me a charger, she asks if I want to order one. Then the kid next to her, probably the manager, who was perhaps a few months older than she, started talking about upgrading my phone, since I was eligible.

Let’s get this straight: I can’t get a phone charger, so I might as well throw away a perfectly good phone and buy a new one, just because it’s cheap and I can.

There is something very wrong with this concept, this society, and the fact that the generation of 20 year olds doesn’t appear to think there is something wrong with that.

I pulled more statistics:

In the United States, we currently “retire” 425,000 phones a day. I venture to say that most of those phones work fine. We probably just can’t find chargers for them, or the two year upgrade period has come and we want a larger camera, or we don’t like the color anymore.

How big a pile would 425,000 cell phones be?

Take my phone, for instance. It’s 0.875 high, 2 inches wide and about 3.5 inches long. 425,000 of them would fill about 2.6 million cubic inches of space.

How much is that? I did some math and came up with a small school bus. A small school bus is about 27 feet long, 77 inches high and about 102 inches wide. So take out all the seats and fill up a school bus chock full of cell phones – and you’ll fit in about 425,000, or the number of phones we decommission in the United States every day.

I think I’ll try to find a charger on eBay.