Alone On A Family Sunday
A few days ago I was in a restaurant and I started to observe people’s behavior. One thing I can say: our inseparable companion of the future and of all hours will certainly be the cell phone. For many, he is already an extension of hands and a constant partner. I have no doubt about that. Some couples were at the same table, but each involved with their own device. They were on the lookout for messages popping up in their inboxes or busy typing away with incredible speed, it felt like a championship. The younger ones typed with both hands at the same time, the older ones, recently introduced to the equipment, did it with only one hand. Some, still shy with the novelty, “gathered corn”.
People were entertained with their respective equipment and paid no attention to who was next to them, in their surroundings, let alone in the coming and going of those arriving and leaving the restaurant. Not a few times I saw waiters standing in front of or beside a table, patiently, in a vain attempt to take orders. In some the orders were placed quickly, but in others the waiters had to wait a long time and, of course, they must have needed the job a lot, as the person barely looked up from the cell phone screen, especially if it was in the middle of the message. And there they remained for long minutes waiting for the end of the call or the message to be sent. There is patience on the part of the waiters and lack of politeness on the part of the customers!
Some people think that because they are behind cell phones and laptops they can do everything, they can be rude, bold, rude… They think that distance exempts them from good manners and the consequences of their actions. It’s very common to find people in apps that, when we greet them, it takes 2-3 days to give us an answer. There are still those who believe they don’t even need to answer. Besides, there are others that leave us talking to ourselves when faced with a question. That’s when the subjects don’t even return. These are technological innovations that are part of our modern world together with all the electronic paraphernalia available on the market and that, in certain cases, only reinforce the scarcity or lack of education. Anyone who is educated, is educated under any circumstances, with or without a cell phone, with or without a laptop, regardless of the application used.
Some couples with young children, in an attempt to talk a little or deal with everyday matters, about which it is not possible to talk during the week, gave the children the device so that they could have a little break and could also be distracting while the parents tried to have a decent dialogue or sometimes having long discussions full of gestures and “washing dirty clothes”, tears were shed, or someone left the table stomping their feet, heading to the bathroom or the exit door .
There were still couples who were too busy with cell phones and were fighting over who would take the child to the bathroom. The father asked the son to wait a little, as he was almost finishing the message. He said to the child: “wait just a minute, son, I’m already finishing and I’ll take you right away”. The woman said, without looking up from her cell phone keypad, for him to hurry up, otherwise the boy would pee his pants and it wouldn’t be long. She claimed that he was screwing up too much and that he gave more importance to the messages than to the child, but she herself would not let go of her braces. Others, more insecure, asked their spouses who they were talking to, questioned who was so important and wouldn’t let them stop for a single minute…
A few tables away, there was a large family, in which only the eldest did not have a cell phone handy. As incredible as people still find it: at this table they talked, as I hadn’t seen for a long time, enjoyed the food served with pleasure and commented on it. It felt like a family gathering, as there were several generations gathered there. They laughed, remembered facts, gestured… Meanwhile, the younger ones, all with an air of boredom, seemed to want to run to the exit door and were distracted with their respective devices or talked among themselves through the existing applications, laughing a lot. They hardly paid attention to the food being placed on the table, the dessert, the speech the patriarch had decided to make at a certain point in the meal. The children barely heard his words. They laughed, whispered, ran, joked, but paid no attention to what the familiar said. The latter, in order to arouse the attention of the youngest and children, beat a fork on a bottle of wine, but even so did not achieve his goal. No one from the younger generation paid any attention to anything he said!
The hours passed, people left, others came in, and the waiters ran from table to table with their notepads in the expectation of being able to take the order soon and dodge the children who ran between the tables screaming loud and clear. The restaurant was very familiar, one of those that families look for, on Sundays, to have a hearty meal and still be able to take their children, as there was no restriction, no frills, as I had seen in many others. You know those restaurants where the waiter is looking askance if the child shakes his leg, cries, picks up the menu and starts asking the meaning of the items? These are natural and expected attitudes of healthy children. Or those establishments where they look at our car and wonder if we’ll be able to pay the bill?
It was a very simple and pleasant restaurant. Most of the people seemed to be regulars, as some greeted and hugged the waiters with a certain familiarity. The food was good, and the price, as my dear and dear friend Carlinhos said, was “honest”. In it everything happened: people talking to each other; couples who decided to catch up on their relationship; customers looking for a pleasurable meal but barely paying attention to what they ate, let alone the flavors being ingested; and so many others who had gone out in search of a pleasant conversation and barely spoke… There were people anyway. It was another Sunday in the warm company of the family or in cell confinement, polite and uneducated!
