The Trend That Drives Me Insanely Bonkers

Mama Kat's Prompt 

1. A trend that you can't stand right now.

There is a trend, right now, that drives me nuts. Completely insane. Insanely bonkers.

It's not a fashion or decorating thing.

I’ve ranted about it before and I will again, no doubt AND I’m guilty at times myself for a portion of it.

I have a smart phone. I like it. It does a lot of things that help with the coordination and organization of my daily life. However, I don’t even know half of what it does because, frankly, I don’t care.

I want to text, take photos, retrieve email, and call my family or a friend.

I want to look up directions in a pinch even though I’ll never admit to being directionally challenged because I’m not so I rarely do. I want to check a movie time or the weather someplace where I’m shortly to depart.

Things of this nature.

So what is the trend I can’t stand?

The constant need for people to continually and obsessively play with their smart phones especially in the presence of other people. And double especially if they are with their friends or families.

Every single thing that comes out of someone’s mouth, they’ll say, “Oh, I’ll Wiki that.”

However, I have several friends who will pull out their phones at dinner or a party or even while sharing a cup of coffee at the local joint for no other reason than to mindlessly use it. That bothers me. It makes me feel as if what we’re doing or saying is not as important as what they’re doing or saying to someone else.

And their phones are constantly beeping, ringing, tweeting, etc.

If I’m going to leave my home to share time with someone, and they’re going to take time out of their busy day for me, I’d like to think we’d focus our attentions on each other and not someone who is not even present.

There are times when it can’t be helped and I am all over it if my kids are calling or texting from school, or someone else’s children, family, or friends are in need of them. We need to be available for important stuff, be reliable to those we care about. I get it.

I don’t bring my phone out with me at night. I have a husband for that ;-). If we are together, which is more often than not, there’s one for emergencies between the two of us.

But when I see people looking at their phones constantly, absorbed,

Tap, tap, tapping on the keys,

Totally distracted from those in their immediate presence, I kind of (no really) have a problem.

Let’s look each other in the eye and speak.

Otherwise, we might as well stay home and text each other instead.

Then we’d probably be in our sweats, on the couch, with a glass of wine and book open in our lap.