The Internet and Cell Phone Addicts

They’re a different genus, these homo electronicas.  They walk upright, all right, but one always strangely finds his way without looking; his head is forever bowed, his eyes permanently focused on the cell phone in his hand.

The other is almost always seated.  Fact is he can only sit comfortably when there’s a computer in front of him.  Any computer will do just as long as it’s not in the form of a human being.

Oddly, though their bodies are in catatonia, their fingers are frenzied.  One gets and sends text messages on the cell phone endlessly while the other punches the computer keys just as endlessly.

A cell phone’s use and misuse must be untenable because our schools have banned them from classrooms.  An exclusive girls’ school in Cebu City went further by banning them in any part of the school.  But homo electronicas can be creative.

Once, some teachers in the school wondered over the way one high school student walked.  Someone had the presence of mind to check further.  It turned out that the student had slipped her cell phone in her underwear to avoid confiscation.  Unfortunately for her, the cell phone had slid further down, and she became the school’s biggest story of the day.  It must be her favorite brand of sanitary napkin, someone commented wryly.

Then there’s this rule in internet cafés to ban school age children during school hours.  But since internet cafes are fast becoming the latest cottage industry, with small out-of-the-way internet cafés blooming in converted home garages, one need not wonder much about this rule’s enforcement.

I went to this small internet café at a chosen hour hoping I’d have a little peace and space.  It was filled with shouting and cursing schoolboys and the smell of sweat.

The number of these aliens is on the rise.  I credit them for minding themselves only and bothering no one.  Being in their midst, though, is like being an unwanted petunia in a cabbage patch.

Why did you have to make an appointment with me when you wanted to see someone else, after all?  I once asked someone in a fit of pique when, after sitting for two hours in a restaurant, our conversation was plain monosyllabic because all the while her eyes and thoughts were on her cell phone.  What I call bad manners, homo electronicas may call multi-tasking.

There’s this young girl who fits the mold of a homo electronica to a T; she’s quiet and keeps to herself.  But while she does fulfill her assigned duties, initiative seems like a strange word in her world.

Some of her abilities defy gravity.  She washes dishes with one hand while her other hand is using the cell phone, texting.  She takes a public transport, texting.  She does almost everything while texting it seems as if her umbilical cord is connected to her cell phone.

Needless to say, she walks like a zombie, texting.  Communicating with her is other-worldly because her mind is always somewhere else.  When she started to eat with one hand while her other hand was texting, I’ve had enough.

Take your pick, I shouted, you continue with college education or study cell phone repair and set up shop.  Eat one more time while texting and I’ll hammer your cell phone!

Then there’s this woman at the nearest internet café who has become a permanent fixture as her children, four in all, have become permanent fixtures because she always takes them along.

I go to this café once a week, and there wasn’t a time when she wasn’t  there.  I’ve never passed by this café on other days without seeing her car parked outside.

She’s the most noticeable customer because she’s the noisiest.  More, she is shapeless on the obese side and has a strange hair coloring that cheapened her instead.  Stranger still, she’s about my age, which doesn’t bode well for what she’s in the café for.

Why does he like me when I’m already old?  She had once said in her booming voice while smiling like a Cheshire cat, her smaller children running around, her bigger kids smoking outside.

Come here, she called on the girl keeping shop at the café.  This guy’s for you, he’s Canadian.  Ohhhh, this one’s good-looking, she swooned another time.

I can’t make heads or tails of her personal profile which seems to be an interesting case study.  Is she a widow?  Is her husband somewhere else and here she is, running wild?  Why does she surf the internet to befriend men to begin with?

They’re not nerds, these two unbelievably remorseless internet and cell phone users.  I understand that more than being homo electronicas, they’re simply called the new addicts.

(May 2006)