FlamingText

Conversation Starter

  I first heard the comment from some of my fellow passengers on the #2, back when I lived in the Central District and used to take the #2 to work downtown. It was always a pretty lively bus, lots of friendly conversation, some occasional trash-talking, and on one or two occasions a bright-eyed entrepreneur in the back offering prescription pills to his fellow passengers at deep discounts.

  I overheard a middle-aged black women joking with her friend about how you know you're in the white neighborhood when you get on the bus and nobody's talking. White people just sit on the bus and read or stare out the window; They generally aren't so much about the talking with their neighbors. I looked up from my book for a moment when I heard this, considered it, and then went back to what I was reading.

  A few months later I moved to Ballard. Following immediately on the heels of my days riding the #2, my experience on the #17 and the #43 provided a study in contrast. The ride from Ballard into downtown was, by comparison, funereal. Punctuated by occasional quiet conversations between passengers who boarded the bus together, it was a overall a twenty-five minute exercise in quiet newspaper reading and discreet social avoidance. Very little talk among strangers. Sometimes I did a crossword.

  No doubt this rich comic vein has already been thoroughly mined by stand-up comedians on BET, but unlike a lot of observational humor about white folks and their mysterious ways in this case I have actual anecdotal evidence that it is indeed funny because it's true. White folks don't talk on the bus. Or so I thought until recently. Yesterday it dawned on me that somebody's finally figured out a way to get white folks to talk on the bus: It's called the cell phone.

  Perhaps you've heard of them? It's a phone with many of the essential attributes of an ordinary phone, but with the crucial distinction that they are not plugged into anything, which allows people to talk on them wherever they happen to be and whatever they happen to be doing, whether they're riding the bus, standing around at a funeral home, merging on the freeway or attending a performance in a darkened theatre. It's really quite extraordinary!

  While the ability to call or be called at any time and any place is certainly a huge advantage over old-fashioned land lines, the best feature of this new cellular technology is one which you never hear mentioned in any advertisement: By far the most appealing aspect of cell phones is the way that they allow everybody within several meters to hear one half of private conversations being held among complete strangers. Meaning one can be privy to all the juicy details of other people's lives while a convenient social barrier prevents any awkward obligation to offer comment or in fact to acknowledge that one can hear what is being said at all.

"So you finally gave notice? Good for you. You hated that job."

"Really? A yeast infection? The worst ever? Ew, gross."

"The bus? Me too! No, I'm on Pike, just past the Convention Center. The #10. Yeah, I know, right? Such losers. Like the guy sitting across from me. Doing a crossword puzzle. Oh wait, he just stopped -- he must be stuck on a word. Maybe he needs a clue. Ha! So anyway, I'll see you in about ten minutes? Alright, bye!"

  When I got on the bus last night, I noticed that everybody on all sides of me, white folks included, everybody was chatting away happily, cellphones pressed up to their ears. Every one of them was holding a seperate conversation with some distant, invisible party speaking from an unknown location. I've never seen so many white folks talking on the bus at once, at least since elementary school.

  Apparently the key factor is that with cellular technology, one can talk to people of one's choosing instead of being forced to interact with those in one's immediate environment. One can be on the bus but not of the bus. While ostensibly they are tools for communication, cell phones have the potential to be so much more: A means of constructing a social bubble around oneself that prohibits any interaction with outsiders and provides a convenient excuse for pretending they are not there at all. It works even better than a crossword puzzle.

  To be fair, not everybody on the bus was talking on a cell phone. Some were listening to iPods.