Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Opinion

We're running out of excuses

By Dale Bryant

There's no denying we live in the communications era. Fax messages hound us; our computers intrude with those magic words: You have mail; and, increasingly, telephones accompany us everywhere we go. And that goes double for Los Gatos.

I don't think I'm imagining that Los Gatans are obsessive about their attachment to portable and car phones. Anyone who walks, drives or dines downtown surely has observed that telephones have become as much a part of the landscape as boutiques and restaurants.

This isn't just a casual observation; I wander through downtown nearly every day. I sometimes eat lunch in downtown restaurants; I go for my latte in the winter and my iced espresso frappé on hot summer afternoons; I buy birthday cards downtown and long-stemmed flowers; I trundle downtown for gifts of all sorts; and I occasionally wander down N. Santa Cruz Avenue just to see what's going on.

As far as I'm concerned, one of the attractions of a walk downtown or lunch in one of the local eateries is that nobody can reach me by phone, fax or email. Yes, the messages will be waiting for me when I return to the office, but they can't invade my "time out." And, at least temporarily, I can escape the office environment.

Lately, though, the office seems to follow people wherever they go. It's gotten so that I can hardly go anywhere that I don't have to look at people talking on their telephones. I don't understand it. Do people like to talk on the phone while they're eating? Do they enjoy strolling with a telephone glued to their ears? Do they think it's fun to dart in and out of traffic, keep an eye out for pedestrians and dodge other cars pulling out from parallel parking spots while chattering a mile a minute on the telephone? And even if they think it's fun, do they think it's safe?

Here's something I know from experience: It's not smart to assume a pedestrian's right of way when the driver of the car careening down the street toward the intersection is intent on a telephone conversation.

I had lunch in one of downtown's popular dining spots today. The woman at the next table was busily engaged in a telephone conversation while her companion looked off into space. I felt sorry for the companion. When we are sitting across the table from someone in a restaurant, we occupy an intimate social space. When the lunch companion is engaged in a conversation with a third, invisible party, it's awkward. The companion doesn't know where to look. She feels like an eavesdropper. For those of us sitting in near proximity, the person doing deals on the telephone over lunch forces a change in our environment; it takes us out of our retreat and back into an office atmosphere. And some of us go to lunch to get away from the office.

On the way back from lunch, I spotted someone sitting on a bench in front of a hair salon having a conversation on the phone and another, with furrowed eyebrows, crossing the street, a telephone snuggled up to his ear.

I suppose the portable telephone is the new power tool. A while back, I was sitting a local restaurant known for power lunches. In walked someone well known as a mover and shaker in the valley. She was dressed in her power suit, carried herself in a take-charge manner and had her portable telephone not tucked discreetly in her purse, but in her hand as if she'd come to the restaurant to conduct business. I was glad we weren't dining together.

The phone at my house inevitably rings the second I sit down to dinner, no matter what time it is. And every night, I curse at the buzzing noise, pick up the receiver and let whoever is calling know that I'm eating dinner. I don't want to reach the point where that isn't a good enough excuse not to talk on the phone. I believe we should be free from intrusion while we eat. Some of us even enjoy a conversation now and then at the dinner table with others who share our lives.

What worries me is that as more and more people allow their lives to be dictated by the equipment that allows us to communicate with more ease, the more we'll all have to conform to that new standard. We'll all be expected to be available on demand.

I understand that there are instances--when your car breaks down at night on the freeway, for instance-- when a portable phone is valuable.

But more often than not, allowing our telephones to follow us wherever we go simply brings more noise and distraction into our lives. Instead of experiencing the colors and textures and aromas of the food we are eating, the phone encourages us to make the dining experience secondary to the business on the phone.

And from the looks of concentration I see on the faces of drivers entering busy freeways while holding a phone to their ears, I can only wish they'd pay so much attention to the task at hand. Which, they may need to be reminded, is keeping their car from crashing into mine.

Before it's too late, couldn't we all think about taking an occasional time out from our busy lives? Maybe just while we're eating in restaurants, strolling downtown or driving in heavy traffic?

Dale Bryant is editor of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.