The question
My friend and I have been close for almost 40 years. In the past five years, she has developed this unbearable habit with her cellphone of constantly watching who is calling while we talk. During the course of almost every phone conversation, she tells me, "Oops, there goes my other line. Call you back." It is either long distance, her children, another friend she needs to talk to or a relative that might need her. I spoke to her about what I consider a rude habit a couple of years ago, and she said those other calls were always very important. Nothing has changed, and I need to deal with this problem but don't know how. It hurts my feelings to be cut off midsentence with what I think is an important subject. Is there a way of dealing with this and not ending the friendship?
The answer
Oh. My. God. You have no idea how this question scratches me where I itch. It's such a hobbyhorse of mine and such a burr in my saddle.
And in an all-time first for me – perhaps in the history of advice columnists – I'll admit I'm a tad stumped. Because it's such a pandemic.
Go outside. Look around. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers out there. Everyone's staring at their freaking phone!
Or maybe it's more like The Walking Dead. Folks are walking into telephone poles and fountains, off cliffs, into traffic and the path of oncoming trains as they text or tweet or whatever it is they're doing.
And they're also all peeking at their phones in their cars, which makes me really angry – one of these morons could kill me or someone I love because of an urgent need to update their Facebook status! (New Facebook status: "I just killed a guy driving and texting.")
Is there any doubt that as our phones get smarter we're getting dumber?
Meanwhile, good friends – friends with otherwise beautiful manners – come over to my house and peek at their phones the whole time and take numerous calls.
I remember the advent of cellphones. And I remember what my mother said about them then, which I thought made sense: "Why should someone punching 10 digits somewhere in the world trump a face-to-face interaction?"
But these days, it's become so universal – and universally accepted – to peek at your phone constantly that it's not considered rude any more. I've seen people sitting in groups of four at restaurants, all of them staring at their phones. Seems normal to them.
And I've done what you've done. I've said to people I might be getting together with for only an hour: "Please don't peek at your phone or take calls. Let's enjoy our time together."
But they always seem so surprised, even miffed, at this request – as if I'm the rude one – that, frankly, I've given up.
Which is why it's so hard to know how to advise you.
It is, as my wife informs me, "the way of the world" now. (She's not too bad about it, but she does it, too – sometimes just to check some factoid pertaining to our conversation. I've come to accept it.) And as the writer Martin Amis said: "It is the summit of idleness to lament the way things actually are."
So I give! Uncle! If being a parent teaches you anything, it's to choose your battles. And the battle against our current obsession with smartphones is too uphill for me.
I'm not saying be like me. Go ahead and fight the good fight if you want to. But you already tried once, and it didn't end well. Do you really want your friendship to "die on that hill"?
I will say, though, that if you lose a phone faceoff every time, that's rude in an old-school way. I'd be tempted to say or do something. Maybe chat less with her on the phone. Maybe do what a friend of mine does: When she calls, e-mail her to acknowledge her calls. She may start to miss your talks and smarten up.
But as far as the peeking-at-the-phone-while-talking-in-person thing goes, that ship has sailed. I would just let it go. Grin and bear it. Grab a magazine. As Montague H. Withnail says in the movie Withnail and I: "It's like a tide. Give in to it, boy."
I can't believe I'm saying that. It makes me want to put my head on my desk and listen to sad music. But there it is.