What do you all have to talk about?

[June 21st, 2006] What do you all have to talk about? Every other person I see walking down the street or behind the wheel of their car has a cell phone at their ear, or else they are of the new species of Homo americanus electronicus that sprouts antennae from their heads and walks along talking to the air. It used to be they'd put you away for that.

What is so pressing? The most typical cell-phone conversation I overhear in my cab—day in, day out—consists largely of "Hey...no, I'm in a cab...are you there already?" Pause. "I'll be there in, like, five minutes." Another pause. "No, I didn't want to drive." An entire conversation based around one's imminent arrival, and the excitement attendant thereon, hoo boy.

Then there's the What He/She/They Said conversation, whereby the events of the evening are replayed, moment by riveting moment. The best ones are when the person hearing the replay was actually present for the first run, thus inspiring a conversation almost entirely made up of two people agreeing with each other. "Uh-huh, yeah, I know...and then he said...." There's the conversation about how bad your cell-phone reception is/was. And the one whereby you tell whoever you're talking to that you got their text message, then basically rehash the content.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover once said, "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." I wonder what he would have made of conversations like these.