Mobile phone use is turning us into a nation of eavesdropping, punctuation-avoiders, writes Priscilla Robinson
I sit in a coffee shop and watch two people sitting opposite each other having a conversation. Only they aren't. It's a modern day riddle. The girl is taking a call on her mobile, and the boy has started to text. She ends her call, he lowers his hand and they resume eye contact and slide back into where they left off.
In the days before mobiles when people in couples got bored, they feigned interest, or drifted off daydreaming for a bit. Or maybe they just broke up sooner.
I used to think I would never say the words "text me later". I had a mental list of People Without Mobiles - most of whom I had not met but hoped to one day - along with an arsenal of arguments against owning one. Cancer. Nobody should be contactable all the time. We were fine before they came along and spoiled everything. It will just be one more thing I can't find in my bag. Either I'll get addicted or the disappointment will be unbearable. I don't need one. And, the only person who will ever ring me on it is my mother.
In the end, things were simplified: I needed one for my freelance work. So in 2005, much to my mother's delight, I gave in and went cellular.
My mother had wanted me get a mobile for a long time, because she likes to be able to contact me in as many ways possible, just in case I shut a couple down. So if you see pigeons circling my head, it probably means we aren't talking.
I got the simplest model going. The buttons fall off in time. I know, because my mother has the same one. I have seen the future and it is covered in Sellotape. But that is OK. I was never in this for glamour.
I have made some progress in a year, which is pretty good for a 21st century luddite. But I don't think I will ever really get used to my mobile ringing, because I still sometimes get a fright when my home telephone rings.
Like just now, when it rang, I jumped and answered with an abrupt "Yes", hoping there would be a voice saying only the word "No", followed by silence, and eventually a click into beeping at the other end. Like some kind of lost Beckett play for the telephone.
Truth is, my 75-year-old mother has embraced new technology much better than me. She rings me up on her mobile and says: "This mobile has roaming automatically," when I know she doesn't know what that means, or whether it is desirable.
She phones me from a hip coffee shop and gives me a commentary on the scene unfolding right beside her. "There's a sugar daddy sitting at the next table with a young one - the young one is bitching up to him about his wife, I think."
Like a lot of people, she believes that nobody can hear you except the person on the other end. In truth it is usually the other way around. Which is why I try to stick to texting.
Texting is less threatening. More like e-mail. You can hold it in your hand and think about it for a while. You can try and work out what it might mean. You can draft various replies.
At least that is what I like to think. I remember one of my first texts from my mother. It read: "How are you". I thought, that is nice, and I will think about how I am and reply this evening. It will be something to look forward to, because I don't always have a lot on. Two minutes later I got a new text from my mother: "Can you not read I said how are you".
I heard the actor Keifer Sutherland explain why texting is fundamentally problematic: there is no tone. I wish he would text my mum, and learn about the over abundant use of tone.
But, with my mother, though I love her dearly, things are rarely as obvious as, how are you? Instead, I get sent texts such as: "bacon no ham yes" and "not sure looking for buttons". Messages which usually make so little sense they require a proper phone call for clarification. This might be her intention.
She abbreviates, but not in a way you have ever known, and she quickly embraced the freedom from punctuation: "Was he the one who said begone very nasty great prayer answer was he on mobile".
Then one day she discovered the full stop and celebrated by sending me (and probably everyone in her phone) this message: "Hello. On my Way. Think health. Don't think cancer. Good thoughts are good for our well being."
I know it is not just my mother who has taken to using the mobile in her own distinctive way. My friend's mother used to say "Over" at the end of each call. And when she missed a call she had to phone back everyone in her address list to see who had been ringing her.
Mobiles have made eavesdropping mandatory, no skill or option involved. Unfortunately, the quality of what you overhear can't be guaranteed, I used to think hearing "I'm on the bus" was the worst, until I heard "I'm in the cinema" followed by a description of the film we were watching.
I overheard my favourite piece of mobile conversation last summer when I was on a bus to Monaghan and we were stuck in traffic just outside the town. An elderly man next to me took out a phone and a number on a piece of paper and made this call: "I'm not going to make it to Mass. Will you say five Hail Marys for me, and then I'll jiggle you in another couple of minutes."
Part of me still hates mobiles. But I say, "long live jiggling", whatever it is. My mother probably knows.