Casual

...Sophie," Sylvia says, "it's me and I'm calling you in your Mercedes from the car phone in my Mercedes...

...Once, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, I heard a young woman say into her cell phone, "Yes, Mother, I'm calling you from the top of the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier...

...I don't think I'll ever get used to looking at someone alone talking loudly as he walks down the street, especially when he is doing so into a headset, with no phone in sight...

...And then she babbled on a bit more as my friend Ann, who fervently believes that trains are for reading not phoning, seethed in a quiet but genuine rage...

...On a bus ride between San Francisco and Santa Rosa, I witnessed the driver ask a passenger to leave the bus because the loudness of his cell phone conversations was bugging her and everyone else on the bus...

...Sophie Ginsberg calls her friend Sylvia Glick from her Mercedes to tell her that she has just acquired a car phone and what a marvelous convenience it is...

...Everyone, I suspect, has had a moment when he wished he could grab the cell phone from a boisterous talker and smash it on the sidewalk...

...The joke is of course about keeping up with those Jewish Joneses, the Ginsbergs, and about the silly conspicuous consumption required to do so...

...Now lots of people walk the street talking not actually to themselves but to other, unseen parties, and generally much louder than your standard maniac talks to himself...

...We're still meeting at noon...

...I'm often amazed at the subjects on which people talk in public on their cell phones—many of them very private subjects...

...We all felt like applauding...

...She's here on the street carrying a Gap bag...

...I bought my first cell phone many years ago chiefly for security reasons, when my wife was traveling to visit her ailing mother a hundred or so miles away, and I worried about her car breaking down en route...

...All this loose talk over cell phones can be irritating, even infuriating...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...Maniacs, in my experience, tend to mutter...

...In my neighborhood, it seems almost unusual to find a person, especially a younger person, who does not have either a cell phone or a cup of coffee in hand as he or she walks along the street...

...I can see the entire city from here...

...Devastating, and delightful, I'd say, and richly deserved...

...Once it's installed, she calls her friend Sophie, car phone to car phone...

...As a two-cell phone man myself, I've forfeited my mocking rights...

...My other phone's ringing...

...Phones have long since come out of the cars and are everywhere part of the urban landscape...

...Only two people know my cell phone numbers, and I have never done business on either phone...

...I wanted to call out: "Madam, your daughter is a liar...

...A friend of mine named Ann Poole told me about sitting on a commuter train from her suburb into Chicago, in front of a young woman who made no fewer than ten cell phone calls to friends, explaining in great detail why she was changing the restaurant in which she was giving a lunch party that Saturday...

...I used to mock people I saw talking on their car/cell phones, thinking them incapable of the least repose, even in the sanctum of their cars...

...I've not yet heard a woman breaking up with a lover, though I have heard a man tell someone off at a high level of vituperation while waiting for a stoplight to change...

...cell phone talkers to be stentorian...

...I said nothing," she replied, "but when I got to work, I called Stefani's and, using dear Amy's name, I cancelled her reservation for Saturday...

...Perhaps because cell phones are so small people feel they have to make up for the size of the instrument by shouting into it...

...Excuse me, Sylvia," Sophie replies, "can't talk now...

...Many of the people she called weren't in, so, in a loud and irritating voice, she left elaborate instructions on voice mail about the change in plan along with the reasons for the change...

...I keep my own new cell phone for roughly the same reason as well as for calls, mostly made to my wife...

...Hi, this is Amy Hemstead [I'm making up the name], and I thought I'd let you know that I've changed the location of Saturday's lunch from the Zodiac Café to Phil Stefani's...

...People talking to themselves used to be fairly common in Manhattan, but the assumption was always that those doing so were a little—sometimes much more than a little—nuts...

...To keep up with her friend, Sylvia persuades her husband to provide her with a car phone...

...I found the joke a lot funnier before I recently acquired my own second cell phone...

...I asked...

...Did you do anything about it...