Cellphone Blues

Crossing the cobblestoned street of the cultural center of Baltimore. To our backs rises the Meyerhoff. To our front the Lyric. All around us are gray parking garages and red brick rowhouses. A mixture of old and new. A mixture of the modern and the historic.

And the people too. Behind me are couples dressed to the nines. Suits, dresses, heels. Ready for a night at the opera. Okay, maybe just a Loreena McKennitt Concert. But it's at an opera house. In front of me, jaywalking over two streets and in front of a rushing ambulance a man in a polo shirt and khakis.

Oh no, excuse me. A golf shirt. Not a polo shirt. A golf shirt.

Behind me the couples hold hands and giggle at the oppressively long "Don't Walk" light, in front of my golf-shirt-guy talks to himself.

Oh no, excuse me. He's talking to his blue tooth headset.

I wonder what he does, golf-shirt-guy, that he requires his headset to be on at 8PM at an opera house. I wonder if he knows his ear is blinking blue. I wonder if he realizes he looks a little crazy crossing the street in front of a rushing ambulance, talking to himself. If he wasn't wearing a golf-shirt I'd be expecting him to ask me for some spare change.

And thus it begins. Before I even set foot into the semi-modern-but-made-to-look-old opera house I've caught a case of the cellphone blues. Blues because the cellphones burn bright blue in the dimmed light of the auditorium. All around me are signs posted. "Turn them off!" they scream. "Turn them off at the door" "Turn them off in the lobby." "Turn them off in the bathroom" Turn them off, turn them off, turn them off. Even the nice ushers, dressed up in there black tuxes with crooked bow ties admonish us.

"You need to turn that off" one says to the girl sitting next to me.

"It is off," She says, looking up from her screen "I'm just texting."

I think we need a new definition of off.

A man sitting below me defines off as hiding the phone under his program as he mumbles. He looks awkward tenting himself with a piece of paper, held over his face. I can't help but stare at him talking on his phone furtively in the same way I used to hide under my covers with a blanket and read past my bedtime. It's a weird correlation to make, especially since he must be in his 50's and I was 7.

When he turns it off he makes eye contact with me for an uncomfortably long time. I feel the need to whisper "You are soooo busted". Instead he winks at me.

The girl stops texting. The man stops talking. The lights go out. And in the crowd below the eerie glow of blue cellphone screens pop up amongst the dark forms. Like faeries, flitting about, impishly pointing to each offender and saying "Here they are! The naughty ones are here and here and here."

There is a weird pause in the darkness, a new pause. Once an audience could be safe in the dark, knowing that instantly the stage would light up and we'd be transported. Now we wait, as ushers run around and help to extinguish the remaining phones...as the first musician waits patiently for our full attention...we wait...a mix of the old anticipation and the modern attention limbo.

The show hasn't even started and we all have a case of the cell-phone blue