It used to be understood that anybody walking alone down the street having a conversation with themselves was crazy. That was before Bluetooth complicated the matter. Now when I see someone alone talking and gesturing to themselves, I have to ask myself are they crazy, or just teleconferencing. Bluetooth users, or 'Bluethers', are triggering my internal radar that lets me know a crazy person is near. I haven't learned to differentiate between the two yet. The last two people I've seen having fits of stomping and yelling at the empty sidewalk in front of them ended up being Bluethers. A Bluether in a bad mood can be scarier than any crazy person.
The only way to know for sure if someone is in fact a Bluether, and not a random crazy person talking to themselves, is to look for a Bluetooth headset. It's usually looped over the ear on the right, but if the Bluether is left-handed, it will be in that ear instead. The headsets are being designed smaller and smaller every year making them harder for me to spot. It's almost impossible to see when someones hairstyle is covering their ears. Occasionally, I've had to get dangerously close just for a glance.
When I look with odd curiosity and confusion at the Bluethers, are they looking back and pitying me for still being shackled with my cellphone to my ear? I have to admit they do look like the superior being, with two hands free instead of only one hand like me. I'm basically an amputee when I'm holding up my phone. I only have one free hand to unload my shopping cart, carry groceries, do banking, fold laundry, slide money into automatic fare-collectors on Muni, cook dinner, and clean the dishes. Being in the health care field, I also have to admit that a headset makes more sense ergonomically, and it probably won't give me brain cancer as fast as my cellphone is reportedly doing.
Seeing people around me enjoying this new freedom of hands-free phone calls is still a bit disconcerting. It's like seeing someone ride a bicycle without holding the handlebars. It's just going to take a little more time until the Bluethers become less unnerving and more immediately recognizable. They are going to become such an ordinary sight that no one talking to themselves will look crazy anymore, not even crazy people. Crazy people will just have to find other ways of looking crazy. Or they could wear a Bluetooth headset too, and look like they're talking to someone else even when they're not. Bluetooth has the unique ability to make sane people look crazy and crazy people look sane.
There's no denying that this technology is on its way to becoming the standard way we will all communicate. Eventually everyone who has a cell phone, including me, will be a Bluether. Streets will be filled with people talking to the air in front of them, and we'll all look normal. Bluetooth devices will become so commonplace that holding up a phone to your ear will be as laughable as rotary phones attached to the wall.
For now, I'm sticking with my cellphone.The tipping point hasn't happened yet. I'll know when it's time, just like I knew when it was time to get a cellphone. That was after bad-mouthing cellphones of course, which I usually do to something before I totally embrace it.
A few days ago, I was given a sign from God that He agrees I should wait.
I was walking home behind Safeway on the side street where homeless men and women line-up a few times a week to cash in bottles and cans at San Francisco Community Recyclers. On the sidewalk right next to me was a stylish guy probably only in his late twenties dressed in a business suit, with great shoulder-length hair half-covering a very small Bluetooth headset he was talking into. I was holding my cellphone up to my ear and having a conversation too. One of the women with an unlit bent cigarette dangling from her gray lower lip stepped out of line and positioned herself on the sidewalk right in between us. As we approached her, she made eye contact with me first, but I quickly pointed to my phone at my ear, letting her clearly see I was busy talking. She immediately turned her attention to the other guy and interrupted him to ask for a light and money.
"Why are you bothering me? Can't you see I'm on the phone!" the guy barked at her.
" No I can't. Where is it? Up your ass, asshole!" she yelled back at him.
I smirked to myself and walked away pressing the cellphone affectionately against my ear.
