There is a girl. I don't know her name, her age, where she is from or what she is doing here. All I know about her is that she has a terrible relationship with her boyfriend. I know this because she has chosen to share her relationship with everyone in the library. She is sitting in the foyer shouting, literally shouting, into her cell phone: "Well fuck you! This happens every time I get you something, you never fucking like it!"
I have set up position several feet behind her, watching, fascinated at the brazen lack of self-consciousness.
"It's always fucking about you, isn't it!"
Two people stand mere feet away, attempting to have a quiet, polite conversation.
"I can't take this shit any more!"
They move further away. Library patrons walk by: Students, professors, maybe even potential donors, evaluating whether or not to give their money to Tufts.
"What the fuck is your problem?"
What is the problem, indeed? Could it possibly be that this girl has chosen the quietest building on campus with the most dedicated and/or desperate students to play host and audience to her profanity-laced rant against her boyfriend's character? No, that could not have been the problem, because she was talking on her cell phone, and as we all know, cell phone conversations exist solely within the plastic casing of the phone, and cannot through any known laws of physics extend to harm innocent bystanders.
But it sure seems like they do. I have learned so much, heard so many personal details about people that I do not and will never know, simply by walking past them and being bombarded with complaints that they are directing towards someone on the other end of a mouthpiece.
We are not talking about simply being too loud on the phone; we're way beyond criticizing someone for saying, "OH MY GOD NO SHE DIDN'T I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT NO HE DID NOT!" while waiting in line for coffee. We're talking about full-fledged made-for-TV emotional breakdowns - and, it would seem that around here, it always happens outside the library. One night as I exited those doors, I happened to overhear a girl involved in what seemed to be a very emotionally painful discussion with someone, probably her long-distance boyfriend, over ... something.
"But how could it fucking happen like that? How the fuck did it fall off the shelf?"
She was having a little trouble forcing the words out through her tears.
"I know, but it just doesn't fucking make any sense, what could it mean?"
The wailing - because that is what it was, wailing - was so loud that people in the campus center probably heard her.
"But I saw it in my fucking dream, what the fuck does that mean?"
And the funny thing is, this girl was standing right in front of the library doors, three people within five feet of her, ten within earshot of what would have been a "normal" talking voice, and she's screeching to the whole campus, to the point where she's shattering windows in Carmichael, when the person she's talking to is half an inch away, in that mouthpiece.
Earlier in the year, I walked up those library steps and heard this from another girl:
"Don't EVER hang up on ... no, don't you ever hang up on me again! And, for your information, I am not talking to you again, for a very, very long time."
No doubt another long-distance boyfriend, who I assume was at his school, broadcasting the conversation over the P.A. system. Yes, problems happen. Fights happen, people cry, but why is someone else's fight happening to me? Why, when I am walking to dinner, do I have to hear someone say, "Well, do you have any Vaseline at home? How about petroleum jelly?" Yes, probably someone just has chapped lips, but I still shouldn't be forced to hear that, especially right before a meal. Even the girl wailing about her dream: Something terrible very well may have happened to her, worse than I could imagine, even, but why is she sharing that with everyone around her?
Cell phones are amazing pieces of technology, true, and the convenience they provide cannot be denied. However, despite all of their features, one thing they can't do is suck a person's voice out of the air. The content of a cell phone conversation may be private, but the noise is not. Everyone can scream, shout, swear, and cry; the general public doesn't need to learn how.
Kenny Richstad is a sophomore majoring in Japanese.
