MAN TRYING TO GET OFF (THE PHONE): INCIDENT ON THE M11

I am on a downtown bus. A large man is speaking at an absurdly inappropriate volume on his cell phone (no, it is not Alec Baldwin.) From the sound of things, he seems to be talking to his girlfriend or wife. People are glaring at him and muttering to one another in a passive-aggressive (or reasonably self-protective) attempt to register their displeasure. For whatever reason, I happen to have, at this moment, the combination of annoyance and recklessness necessary to voice the collective grievance. “Excuse me, could you stop talking so loud?” He gives me a sort of blank look and then goes back to the phone. “Honey…Honey…No honey…listen I'm on the bus…so it's really rude of me to be talking like this on the phone…ok?” But no, he doesn't hang up. “Yeah, yeah, but, honey..no listen…we'll deal with that when I get back…but listen…no.. .LISTEN!...it's rude to everyone around me…no, LISTEN TO ME!!...I DON'T CARE…you're making me talk…no, no… you're making me talk loud on the bus and that is not nice…” And then after a brief pause of theatrically exasperated listening, he resumes. “That's NOT what I said…why do you always do this?? That's NOT WHAT I SAID!!…Listen I have to get off...Honey..HONEY!…NOW LISTEN!…I have to get off because all these people on the bus can hear me..” He looks over at me in some bizarre search for approval. As if far from being a perpetrator of this crime against civility, he was a victim too. Or as if voicing--in ever louder and more irritated tones--his recognition of his wrongdoing somehow absolved him of responsibility for it. “NO..NO! …Honey…HONEY…That is NOT NOT what I said. We'll talk about it when I get home…You are making me be very rude to all these people on the bus…No…NO!!...Honey …HONEY!!.. YOU ARE MAKING ME BE VERY VERY RUDE TO THESE PEOPLE…” I'm not sure what the other passengers were experiencing, but this piece of public theater elicited in me the rare combination of outrage and delight. Needless to say, I have no idea how that phone call ended.

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Note: The Alec Baldwin encounter and the cell phone guy encounter did not happen in such close temporal proximity as the order of these postings would suggest. In fact, the cell phone episode happened a while ago and the Alec Baldwin encounter just made me think of it, so I decided to write it up. I just wanted to reassure everyone that-- rumours to the contrary notwithstanding-- I am not some kind of magnet for public transporation weirdness.

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Posted on 11/12/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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