Telephone

 

Remember when telephoning was private, and we didn't take calls in public?

Back then, some of us even felt conspicuous in a phone booth.

Maybe not as conspicuous as Audrey Hepburn in Charade (1963) -- she had murderers on her tail -- but still "exposed."

Today, people seem eager to lay themselves bare for open ears.

They pace to-and-fro on street corners, locking horns with whomever is on the other end of a hands-free call.

They lean into laptops in diners, pitching dates and times and tossing about "negotiation" and "non-starter" and "client control."

They yell into smartphones their whereabouts, what they've ordered from the menu, if they're enjoying it and when they expect to be done.

One wonders if this is just more evidence of folks' need for attention or if our personal boundaries are so porous now that we are all occupants of one another's space, whether we want to be or not.