People Are More Important

The other day, I was working on my laptop at McDonald's - Mickey D's, in case you were not aware, not only has (arguably, I realize) good food but also free Wi-Fi - when I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between a rather frustrated father and his teenage son over on the table adjacent to me.

The situation was basically this: The boy was paying a lot more attention to his iPhone than to his father, to his meal, or to basically anything else going on around him. I don't know if he was texting or playing Angry Birds or what, but he was far more involved in the virtual world than in the real one. The father did not like this. He repeatedly asked his son to put the phone away. Finally, the father said, "People are more important than iPhones."

This is not the kind of wisdom one normally expects to hear at McDonald's or at most any other public place, for that matter. But I feel that it was a profound statement nonetheless.

In my own travels, it has not been uncommon to see a good number of people paying more attention to their iPhones, iPods, iPads, flux capacitors, or what-have-you than to other people, and it usually makes me feel sad for these folks. There are the more-obvious examples of this happening, such as people texting while driving their cars or a couple having a text conversation while sitting right next to each other. There are also the less-obvious examples, which include people sitting alone in a corner, away from the crowd at a social event, texting someone else and essentially giving out the message that "present company" is just not that important. I am also told that there are people who stay up into the wee hours of the morning texting their friends for hours on end.

Don't get me wrong; like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, I love technology, and it has done a great deal to improve all of our lives and the way that we communicate. I'd rather have a text conversation with someone than no conversation at all, or I'd prefer to send out a mass text to, for example, my improv troupe when it would save me the effort of making 30 different phone calls. But texting is something like #15 on my list of preferred communication methods, and I'd much rather have face-to-face interaction with people. Also, the purpose behind texting, for the most part, is with the goal in mind of seeing that person or persons in a face-to-face setting later on.

But Angry White Loner, you say. You send me about as many texts as everyone else does.

To which the AWL replies: That's quite possibly true. How about we meet up face-to-face and discuss it over dinner sometime?  Your treat, of course. ("You," in this case, is a single woman that the AWL wants to get to know by sending random flirty texts.)

Admittedly, if he were Superman, the AWL's kryptonite would be talking to women on the phone; he doesn't deny it. (Speaking of which, the AWL has a ticket to see the new Superman reboot Man of Steel this Saturday, and he wants to get in on the hype. There may very well be a movie review forthcoming.)

At any rate, perhaps that's a topic for another blog post. And perhaps the wise McDonald's father's message was meant for me just as much as it was meant for everyone else. Speaking of whom, if we ever meet again, sir, it will be my privilege to buy you anything you want from the dollar menu.

Your treat, of course.