Where You Look Is Where You Go
They were behind at the orthodontist's office and the waiting room was full. My daughter went to sit down as I checked in, and I sucked it in to slide into the one seat open next to her. The two boys, both under 10, in our row were each on their phones. Their mom, sitting in front of them was on her phone. In fact, everyone in the waiting room was on a phone except for me and my daughter.
I looked around and realized we may have gotten the zombie apocalypse wrong. We thought there would be an infection, some mysterious pathogen that turned people into vacant-eyed versions of themselves, shuffling through the world oblivious to the humans around them.
Turns out, we just needed unlimited data.
Her father and I have been hedging our daughter's societal connection that none of us can seem to shake, aka a cell phone. And at that moment, I felt oddly defiant, with both my personal and work phones in my pockets. I challenged my daughter to a thumb war.
She has an incredibly long thumb that isn't from my side of the family, so I lost. But since my teen was still interested in being silly with me in public, I'm going to chalk it up as a semi-win.
My exasperation with people on their phones has increased as my ability to hold small talk has improved. It seems deeply unfair that now that I can jauntily banter with almost anyone, everyone has clammed up. As an introvert, I spent years acquiring this skill only to discover society had collectively decided we could avoid talking to strangers forever.
Except we can't. Or at least I don't think we should.
Where is my daughter going to learn that skill if everyone is connected but no one is present? How does she learn to make the throwaway comment to the person next to her, to notice when someone wants to talk and when they very much do not, to tolerate the occasional awkward silence without immediately reaching for something to fill it?
Look, I'm guilty too. I keep connected to a couple of real-life friends during the day. I answer emails on the fly even when I probably shouldn't. I have pulled out my phone during a lull without making a conscious decision to do it. Sometimes I unlock it and stare at the screen with the vague sense that there was something I meant to do, which is probably the closest modern humans get to digitally wandering into a room and forgetting why.
But I'm reminded of a phrase you hear when you learn to ride a motorcycle: "Where you look is where you go."
The lesson is literal. Stare at the pothole you're trying to avoid and you have a surprisingly good chance of riding straight into it. You have to train your eyes toward the path you actually want to take.
I wonder what happens when we spend hours every day training our eyes downward.
There are bigger arguments about phones, of course. What they do to attention spans, childhood, sleep, mental health, and our ability to be alone with our own thoughts. I'm less interested in declaring the little rectangles evil than I am in noticing what disappears while we're looking at them.
A thumb war, for one. A stupid joke with a stranger. The ancient magazine at the doctor's office. A kid asking a question because there is nothing else to do. Watching someone come through the door and realizing they need the seat more than you do. All the tiny, largely meaningless interactions that teach us how to exist around other human beings.
Maybe boredom had a job. Sitting there with nothing to do forced us to look around. Looking around made us notice people. Noticing people occasionally made us talk to them. And talking to them, awkwardly and imperfectly, taught us something about how to live among strangers.
My daughter beat me at another thumb war before they finally called her name. For a few minutes, at least, we knew exactly where we were looking.
Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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