Cellphones are sometimes blessings but, most times, curses. 

When your 89 year-old father is running late because of city traffic, it is a blessing not to start calling emergency rooms around the city.  If you are on a bus and a teenager is talking about adolescent issues and her first visit to the gynecologist, well, then, it is a little like being in purgatory.

Recently, on a bus going uptown on the west side of Manhattan, a woman in her mid-to-late seventies was having a conversation on her cellphone.  To be more precise, she was YELLING into her cellphone as if she were hard-of-hearing or had never used a cellphone before (or both).  A man in his sixties turned around and told her he was very sensitive to noise and ask very politely if she would mind lowering her voice.

Her response was to tell her friend, “can you believe someone told me to quiet down? If you were next to me and we were screaming to each other, no one would say anything to us.” 

You can’t argue with that, mostly because all you would get out of it is a headache.