Even Spies Take the Bus

It is the potently ubiquitous yet rarely enforced rule, unique to this time period, but with its roots in Village Idiots: it is the “no cell phone” rule when traveling in public spaces.

Let’s paint a familiar scenario: you’re sitting on a bus returning to school and the person in the seat behind you is chatting away to her BFF*, oblivious to the fact that she is causing great pain to her fellow travelers. She is most likely wearing Uggs, a short skirt, and a belly shirt that exposes an over-hanging gut, like some fleshy Hanging Garden of Babylon. Her weapon is a bedazzled Sidekick (shout out to T-mobile, y’all!). As she chatters away, the conversation on your end might sound something like this:

“Uh-huh…well—uh-huh…(squeal)…like…Alcopulco…a turkey sandwich…she’s so annoying, she’s just so skinny…I just wish my life could be like Laguna Beach…”

And this goes on for some time and the whole while you and your fellow passengers are left sitting there hoping for a swift and painless death to relieve you all from this auditory torment. As you near your final destination, someone else has gone and started up a new phone chat and, astonishingly, it is even more (ob)noxious than all the ones that came before it (and there were many), and in a last ditch effort to dull the pain, you make good with God, break the emergency window, and leap out of the moving vehicle (to make matters worse you land in the back of a Nut Company’s truck, this one carrying cashews, and you HATE cashews both for their shape and comparatively mushy texture. "Why couldn't it have been almonds?!" you demand of your God, but there is no answer. Typical.).

Now mind you, not all public phone chats are not violently snotty; some are just painfully boring. An excerpt: “Oh, I dunno—sort of—sort of overcast…I was going to bring a sweatshirt—no the grey one—but it had a ketchup stain on it…yeah I had a hamburger last night…it was okay…I think maybe later I’ll buy some new soap.” Which conversation is worse? Hard to say.

Public transportation authorities have tried to solve the problem by placing signs and making announcements on board, but nothing seems to work. Picking up on the odor of altruism, I’ve sniffed out the trail and followed it until I found a solution for this thorn in the heel of the human condition. Thus far we’ve established that people are addicted to talking on their cell phones in public, and it’s clear that they’re going to do this regardless of “the rules” or the personal comfort of the people around them. This much we know. So if we can’t stop people from having obnoxious or boring conversations in public, how can we at least dull the pain for those who have to hear it? Easy, by enforcing a new rule, nay, a law, this one punishable by death, that says that all conversations held in public need to sound like espionage novels. This way the people around the cell phone users are entertained and in the best cases, are left begging for more. It’s free entertainment on the cell phone user’s dollar.

Under this new set of rules, a conversation like the ones above would be translated into something like this: “Blackbird…he’s been neutralized. The syndicate found the bug we planted and while we were in the convoy they picked him off from a helicopter which I promptly began firing rockets at until it exploded. Then my car exploded and then this woman out walking her baby exploded because she was also a spy and her baby was actually a bomb. When I came to I was in a bunker near the Earth’s core where I was tortured—don’t worry, I said nothing of the map. They don’t know we have it. I managed to melt the handcuffs with my shoe laser before killing everyone in the bunker—of course I didn’t kill the scientists…they’re the only ones who can stop this now and if anyone---” (lights on, PA system crackles on) “Ladies and gentlemen, Boston South Station, please watch your step on your way out.” Collective groan.

On the way out, everyone will pat the cell phone user on the back and congratulate them on their continued success in the fight against the syndicate and possibly even hoist the cell phone user on their shoulders amidst great cheering and song. However, tragedy strikes shortly after the celebration begins as the cell phone user is picked off by an agent of the syndicate proving once more that not everyone who follows this new rule is following it because they are courteous, law-abiding citizens; sometimes spies just need to take the bus. If this new plan succeeds, I plan on splitting the proceeds with a charity devoted to the children of spies who have been assassinated on public transport. What proceeds, you say? What proceeds indeed!


*(means “best friend forever”…see they call it BFF because it’s the initials of the three words which they represent, it saves time, like text messaging someone instead of calling them and it’s all very clever)