I'm Out of Touch

I feel so very out of it some days. Today, for example. I just returned from the grocery store where I was the only customer not wearing an earpiece.

Remember the good old days of 2007 when if people wanted to chat loudly about brand of toe fungus cream their spouse wanted they had to hold their cell phone up to their ear to do so? At least then you knew they were conversing with a real live person and not having a schizophrenic breakdown in the personal hygiene aisle.

Now even the blue hairs have a Bluetooth. And that's what bothers me the most.

I thought I could count on grandma and grandpa to hold the line against having to be technologically wired to everyone in their lives at every moment of the day and night. I figured if kids wanted to be turned into droids that was their business, but the Red Hat Ladies and their consorts, they were supposed to uphold the tradition of personal freedom to roam without anyone knowing where they were. A freedom I was more than willing to fight for.

The truth is that when I leave the house I want to leave the ringing phone behind. I don't want to read my 53 e-mails about Viagra and Faux-lex watches. I'm okay not being able to hook up to the Internet to read whether Tiger's mistress's former boyfriend's massage therapist is a third cousin to John Edwards's mistress's aromatherapist. I just want some old-fashioned piece and quiet.

You can be in communication with everyone you know all the time. But when someone points at my technology-free ears and calls me "Out of touch," I'll just nod and smile. You're damned right, I am.