A New Blight on Society

When I was young - and by young I mean the cusp between teenagerness and adulthood - I always listened to my Walkman. Whenever I was around strangers such as on the bus, I would turn the volume down.

Now, some may think I'm simply being polite. If the truth be known, the truth is I didn't want strangers to know what I was listening to for fear of being made fun of.

No kidding.

So for me it is beyond comprehension that one would play ones music at a volume others could hear.

But it happens my friend. All the time - for years. Not one fellow passenger has had the balls (or motivation) to tell a loud-earphone-user to turn the shit down. Not even me. A well-placed dirty look seems to appease any offended listener.

Collectively, we've learned to live with it.

As we have with cell phone ringers.

See, it has become perfectly acceptable to have a loud (and more recently annoying) ringtone on ones cell phone. I always get annoyed. In summary - chick sitting on the bus. All of a sudden, It Takes Two breaks out. Chick clutches here phone. She doesn't answer it, but rather looks at the display for about 50 seconds before answering it.

All she gets are a couple dirty looks.

Meanwhile, I ALWAYS have my phone of vibrate when I'm outside of home. Perhaps mainly because I don't want dirty looks thrown my way.

There you have it. People playing music too loud on earphones, and folks with loud and annoying ringers on their cells.

Combine them, and what do you get?

The new trend in Transit Annoyance.

People whose Ipods are so loud, they don't hear their phones ringing. As an aside, it appears that friends of loud-music-listeners tend to call back if their first call goes unanswered - apparently in case they didn't hear it the first time.

I kid you not.

We need to get together my friends, and a least make this more than a dirty-look incident.

After all, they don't know why we're giving them a dirty look.

They can't hear their fucking annoying phone.

Categories: Transit, Idiots