My Biggest Pet Peeve

As cellular telephones have become more prevalent our manners as a society have become worse. People leave their ringers on during class or a movie, create a substantive danger to commuters by talking on their cell phones while driving and (thanks to bluetooth headsets) make everyone they are talking to aware that they are less important than the possibility they will get a call by never taking their phone away from their ears.

These are all somewhat maddening but to me there is one cell phone taboo that is more annoying than any other: forcing other people to eaves drop. Today on the bus to school this morning there was a small girl speaking on her cell phone disrupting the otherwise serene morning bus ride. She was speaking very loudly about some roommate drama that was happening with her. Apparently her roommate was upset that LoudTalker bought a wireless Internet router and as a result removed her own from the communal living space. I didn't want to know any of this, but because this girl was screaming into her cell phone and I didn't have my Ipod with me I had no choice but to listen. 

Most people who are reading this already know that being forced to eaves drop is my biggest pet peeve. If I am in a car with someone and they start having a conversation on their cell phone my blood starts to boil. An important distinction here is the "conversation" element. I do not mind when someone answer their phone to get directions to where we are going to to exchange 1 or 2 important pieces of information, but if I here someone say "so what did you do today?" I consider it over the line. The primary reason I get so annoyed with this I suppose is because I get bored if I am not stimulated constantly, and there is nothing to do when the one other person in the vehicle is on the phone. I can't exactly just walk away (at least not without a bad case of road rash). I can't turn up the radio to drown out the talking because then it is too loud for the other person to have their conversation and I become the rude one. So I am forced to sit there and look out the window and pretend that I am not paying attention to what the person next to me is talking about. 

You may have seen me try to spare others from my own infractions without even realizing it. If you have been in a study room with me when I receive a phone call and I get up and leave the room you may have thought I was secretly going to talk about you behind your back. No, I was just trying to spare you from listening to me tell my landlord I am not intending to live in that house again next year. If you are in a car with me going nowhere important you may have been confused when my phone rang and I answered "hey I am doing something right now, can I call you back later?" Don't worry, these were all just ways for me to avoid subjecting you to the awkward silence induced by pretending you are not eaves dropping on me.