Things that annoy me about today’s youth

The biggest thing, besides baggy pants and too tight clothing is the cell phone.

I have a cell phone. I love my cell phone. I use my cell phone daily and I even text message people with it daily (after Train Guy showed me how to do it. Now I’m addicted). What I hate are kids who can not remove their ears/fingers from these damned pieces of electronics equipment for more than 5 minutes.

I am now dating someone of a younger generation and I hate it just as much when he does it as when any other kid does it. When we first started dating and were out to dinner his phone (which never leaves his jeans pocket) would ring and he WOULD ANSWER IT. After the second time this happened and I realized it was not a family emergency or the news that he had won the lottery, I calmly said, “If you ever answer that phone again when you are out on a date with me and you know it is just a friend calling to say hi I will never go out with you again.” He now keeps it on vibrate and may look to see who is calling but will only answer it if it is important.

A few weeks after that we were at the movies and he, apparently, received a text message (Yes, GOD FORBID he actually turn the damned thing OFF). He read it with the blue cell phone glow lighting up his face, and then REPLIED to it. Again me, “If you ever do that again I will never go out with you again.”

So jump to the other day. I was e-mailing my good friend, Joe, who I used to work with in Cincinnati. He now teaches college kids and we were bitching about this new phenomenon of media obsession by the youth of America. He wrote:

"it's the phones, dude, they just can't stay off the phones. Ben Folds playedhere last week -- not even he could sustain their interest for more than about 8 minutes. after that, it was back on the phones. there were probably 10,000 undergrads there that night and not one of them could shut the fuck up for ten seconds and enjoy the moment. they're constantly elsewhere, checking the texts messages, the voice mails, talking to buddies, their minds eternally wondering what else is going on with other people in other places. fucking obnoxious."

That was it. Why can’t they just enjoy the moment instead of worrying that they are missing out on something else? And you know what’s funny? They’re not missing anything because ALL of them are wasting their time checking in on each other so they aren’t even paying attention to what’s right in front of them that might actually give them something to talk about!