Liam Sweeny's Blog - Posts Tagged "strangers"
Can I Borrow Your Cellphone?
Today, while getting my 24 oz. cup of Stewarts's finest dark roast, I leave the store, and as I'm walking to the car, a guy asks me for a favor. Now usually that favor is a cigarette or a lighter, and I'm a good sport about that. But his favor was "Do you have a cellphone I could use?"
Now it was daylight, the guy wasn't a suspicious looking sort, and as it would turn out, I left my cell at home. But I had to think about it. And I realized what a thing that is, lending your cellphone to a stranger. There aren't any payphones anywhere, and sometimes people (like me) leave their phone at home and need to rely on the goodwill of a stranger to make a call.
But whereas a cigarette is an object that loses its tie to me the moment it's out of my hands, my cell, even returned, has one or more numbers, strangers' numbers, now attached to it.
So this post is just a question to anyone that might have their ears on, who may have had that similar queasy feeling in their gut about it:
What's your "cellphone lending policy"?
Now it was daylight, the guy wasn't a suspicious looking sort, and as it would turn out, I left my cell at home. But I had to think about it. And I realized what a thing that is, lending your cellphone to a stranger. There aren't any payphones anywhere, and sometimes people (like me) leave their phone at home and need to rely on the goodwill of a stranger to make a call.
But whereas a cigarette is an object that loses its tie to me the moment it's out of my hands, my cell, even returned, has one or more numbers, strangers' numbers, now attached to it.
So this post is just a question to anyone that might have their ears on, who may have had that similar queasy feeling in their gut about it:
What's your "cellphone lending policy"?
