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Read other letters about this article
Golly, there sure seem to be a lot of readers just waiting to tee off on hapless LW for one reason or another:
1) You're a meanie to be annoyed by your wife/wife's behavior
2) I don't like cell phones, therefore your problem doesn't matter
3) How dare you not like texting? I'm older, and I have no such problem
4) Driving and talking can be dangerous (p.s. I see no distinction between driving while speaking and driving while typing on a 3 inch "keyboard")
5) As a general rule,I am superior to people and like to attempt rhetorical displays of dominance
This is only suprising because I've come to expect such thoughtful and intelligent responses to this column, many of which are as worth reading as Cary's (which I'm a big fan of, even if I don't always agree).
Maybe we could lighten up, not grind our own axes (egads! guilty) quite so vigorously, perhaps even engage the main idea?
Cell phone trouble: It's not the world's greatest existential dilemma, but if it affects your daily life, it could be worth thinking about and trying to solve.
My dear mother (50s, tech savvy in many other regards) and I have similar comm breakdowns on cellphones. For the longest time, she didn't "get it" when a call was dropped.
When I called back I would be greeted with a flurry of loud-talk hello-hellos which drowned out my own attempts at speech.
Finally she would laugh nervously and say--as though using Martian technology for the first time--"What happened?!"
Things are improving, and I think a combination of humor, patience, and technical understanding will help them get even better.
Thanks a bunch for the people with insight into mic placement, background sounds, and voice-feedback. Knowing these things will make it easier to converse with someone I love using spoken language, which is a worthy enough goal, I suppose.
