The Intermittent Presence of a Friend

Have a lunch at McDonald’s on a Saturday and watch the boys and girls sitting around you. They eat and drink, chat and laugh. Then one of them draws apart, bows his (or her) head and concentrates on the smartphone. He (or she) is texting, commenting a post of a Facebook friend, answering an email or simply checking the updates.

This happens pretty regularly even in small groups and couples, too. We adults would consider this unfair, but they don’t. If our phone rings and we can’t help answering, we are taught to leave the seat not to disturb our tablemates. Not them. No one is offended if they whatsapp to a faraway contact while going places or dining alone with their girl or boyfriend.

But if we think this out, that’s exactly what we do when we go to the theatre or the cinema: We meet and chat before the show then watch it on our own, giving full attention and silently – except for a few words we sometimes dare whisper in the ear of the nearby sitting friend. At the end we get back together to comment the play or the movie and it’s only now that the viewing becomes the collective experience we meant when we chose to invite others out for the night.

Similarly, when the boy (or the girl) is over with his (or her) i-Something, the device is shown around to the rest of the group and the message, the pict, the clip, the post or the comment is shared “live”. If it’s a joke they all laugh together (sometimes the group picks on and makes fun of someone who is absent, but that’s another story), if it’s something “serious” they’re all welcome to have their say on the issue. Maybe a “solution” is found or a step forward is taken in the story and it can be forwarded to the one concerned straight away.
What started as a one-to-many output, spontaneously turns into a many-to-one instant reply.

This is something we cannot do out of the theatre after the show, unless we do like them: With a smartphone we connect to the director’s website or blog and post our comment. But if we upgrade our habits this way, we must also accept and not complain if one day we catch a friend, sitting opposite at the table, drifted apart in his own thoughts, texting on his brand new mobile.

Discontinuity in many aspects of our contemporary life is something we are learning to come to terms with. Over and Above friendship and telephone conversations.