Yesterday was unusually noisy. I got on a bus in the morning to go downtown and pick up a book at the library and then go meet a friend for lunch. I left a little early because I didn’t want to rush. As the bus glided across Mt. Tabor, whooshing smoothly along beneath the green canopies that are unusually lush this year, a woman sitting in the back shouted through her list of maladies for her newfound friends, a couple seated not more than a row from her. “It’s OCD I’ve got,” she said. “You know, obsessive-compulsive disorder, that plus some post-traumatic stress issues.” The couple oooed and ahhhed appreciatively. A diagnosis of some sort – any sort, often – is a status symbol in Portland. There were many other items on the agenda: an upcoming wedding, a summer camp for someone’s child, and loud mouth’s new dwellings, which she’s moving into next week. “It’s a great apartment, and they take Section 8,” she bellowed.
I picked up my book, trolled around the stacks a bit, and, having almost an hour before I was to meet my friend, decided to go for coffee. I love doing this on weekday mornings. As long as one’s available, I sit by a window and watch the business of daily life in action. There is a lot of movement downtown, a lot of accomplishing going on. The office workers, the street kids, the tourists and the city workers with their flags and bulldozers, they’re all on a mission, and I love to watch. I got my coffee and sat down in front of a long panel of glass, and witnessed something I didn’t think was possible. I discovered that there is something I hate more than overhearing people’s cell phone conversations, and that’s overhearing people’s cell phone conversations and, thanks to the speaker phone feature, the other person as well. Some slob sat there and took three calls in the 14 minutes I managed to remain seated before I fled. He was looking for files, and checking on the status of a repair job of some sort and waiting for someone to drop something off. Even the hiss of the espresso machine was no match for this asshole. He and the people he was shouting with were louder, so I guess he won.
The loud conversations on the bus are like texture to me, a piece of living around other people. The cell phone set to speaker phone mode, on the other hand, is another sign of our demise, I think. Someone who thinks it’s okay to have conversations so inane that they’re not even necessary with the other person on the speaker in a way that’s impossible to not hear is either completely oblivious or so delusional that they believe they, and their conversations, matter. I’m not sure which is worse. I’m not sure I want to know which is worse.
But it all ended well. I had a great lunch with a good friend and on the way home, shortly after I got off the bus, I was walking toward my house and I heard something odd. It was like a tapping noise, or a clicking of some sort. I stopped and listened for a moment, then kept walking. In a few moments I stopped on the sidewalk, and there, on the front porch of a little green house, sort of hippyish, was the source of the noise: a guy, sitting on the floor, using an old typewriter. I hadn’t heard that noise in so many years that it was exotic, which made me wonder, for a brief moment, if someday I’ll respond that way to hearing someone talk on the cell phone. I can only hope.
