All Plugged Up

It was a beautiful cloudy morning--perfect for a pick/walk.  Perhaps I have just coined a term:  pick/walk \'pik/'wok\ n (ca. 2011) [prob from picking up trash while taking a walk] : the art of clamping trash with an instrument used for that purpose and depositing it in a waste receptacle while strolling along a street or highway.  There.  Now all I have to do is notify Merriam-Webster. 

It's Thursday, so I had a destination pick/walk--the Farmer's Market.   (I couldn't return the dry, chewy, perfect-for-silage corn I bought the previous week, but I sure could try to get my money back.) Starting what has by now become my all-too-familiar routine, I pulled on my leather gloves,  folded down the top of my garbage bag and crossed the hiway in front of my house.  I chirped a friendly "Hello!" to the first person I met--a young man carrying a backpack and walking toward me.  No response.  Distressed that my greeting-a-total-stranger charm may be fading, I then "good morninged" a cyclist who turned right in front of me.  Nothing.  This was perplexing as years ago I concluded after careful study that 99.99 out of 100 people will respond to a smile and a hi if you make the effort.  "What's wrong with you people?" I muttered aloud.  When the 3rd person totally ignored my greeting as he swooshed past on his bicycle, it dawned on me that none of these guys could hear me.  "Why not?" I wondered.  These are young people in their prime ear years!  You probably have guessed what I'm getting at.  Earbuds!  Their ears are plugged with those black, pink, white, gray, silver, purple, blue or green noise-reducing, noise isolating, interchangeable silicone ear pieces attached to cords so one can listen to his iPod, iTouch, iPhone or mp3 player.  This prevents these kids from entering into and enjoying the world around them.  In 40 years, I wonder if they will accept stuffing hearing aids into their ears with the same careless abandon.

Those of you who view texting and e-mail as the cause of the premature death of something we used to call "letters" may also well hold iPods and their attached Earbuds responsible for atrophied manners such as the common greeting of passers-by on the street.  What are these kids listening to anyway?  Music?  Since when does everyone like music so much that they cannot leave their homes without being connected to "You Give Love a Bad Name" (Bon Jovi) or some equally uplifting ditty accompanied by so much percussion that you can't understand the lyrics anyway?  (Not understanding the lyrics might be a good thing except for the outrageously brutal vibrations received by body parts located from the chin upwards.)  OK.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I suppose they could be listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, but I doubt it. 

What will become of these noise addicts?  They are missing the robin's encouraging song, the screech of a magpie, the haunting cry of the falcon, the rustling of the breeze, the ambulance turning left in front of them at the corner!  They're going to forget life's small, but endearing custom of greeting a fellow occupant of the planet as he walks through life.  Maybe if they are addicted soon enough, they'll never learn how even one unbidden smile can make someone's day.  It's true--try it for yourself.  I suppose all this electronic railing puts me squarely in the over-50 demographic.  Just this week, my daughter explained to me, "Mom, people have a hard time reading you."  So call me a geezer, i.e. "odd or eccentric."  Guilty!  But at least I'm a friendly, unplugged geezer.  I just want to say "Hi!"

Always,
Winter