St. Arbuck’s is
busy and typically noisy on this late Friday morning in mid-June. It’s a wonder
I ever get anything done within that environment, but I do. It’s as if the
ambient noise provides a cocoon within which I am freed up creatively.
I know, it makes
no sense.
Not sure how
this is going to go today, as I’m a bit fried from lack of sleep protracted
over several nights complicated by depleted creatively due to the intensity of
effort on the novel...you’re really excited to keep reading, right?
(Insert
appropriate smiley-faced emoticon)
A family of four
entered—mom, dad, teen son and preteen daughter—and sat in close proximity to
my table.
And then they
ordered.
And then they
got their drinks.
And then they
sat back down.
And then they
pulled out their iPhones.
And...well...then
that was pretty much it.
All four of them
sat there pecking away on their virtual keyboards in silence except for the
occasional giggle from the son and daughter resulting from something witty they
had said to each other via text.
The dad leaned
over to the mom to show her something on his screen; she smiled, showed him
something on her iPhone, but neither said a word.
This went on for
a good thirty minutes.
I wasn’t making
any kind of judgment on what I was seeing; I just found the scene to be amusing
and utterly fascinating.
Suddenly all
four of them erupted into laughter—the mom had sent them a mass text containing
a humorous picture.
The dad’s phone
vibrated, he answered the call and stepped outside to talk.
A minute or two
later, the mom did the same thing while the kids now sat there by themselves.
About ten
minutes later, the daughter looked up from her phone, glanced around and seemed
to notice for the first time that mom and dad were gone.
“Hey, where did
mom and dad go?” she asked her brother.
He grudgingly
roused himself from his reverie, looked around the room and shrugged his
shoulders before going back to whatever it was that he had been doing.
The last I saw
of them, the dad was pacing on the sidewalk in front of St. Arbuck’s, one hand
holding his phone and the other gesturing broadly while carrying on a very
serious conversation; the mom standing outside just to the right of the
entrance, shoulder pressing the phone to her left ear while chatting amiably and
worrying a hangnail on one of her fingers; the kids standing together directly
in front of the door, phones held in both hands, heads bowed, eyes focused on
their respective screens oblivious of arriving customers having to step around
them to gain entrance.
I smiled, shook
my head in wonder and went back to surveying the ebb and flow of life unfolding
before me.
The modern
family.
Interesting.
