40° Is Too Low

• A Chilling Discovery
• On i-rodents
  

My brief little jaunt to the grocery store led to the chilling discovery that it is just a tad too cold to go out to busk. My uncovered hands were stinging a bit on the handlebars of the bike by the time I arrived back at Sacred Heart. The temperature reading of 40 degrees jived with this, as that is 3 degrees below my personal cut-off point for busking in cold weather.

That is not only because of the difficulty of playing, due to loss of muscle control; but, the times that I have tried to play in this kind of cold, I found that the tourists were unwilling to stop and listen and, instead, were making quick, stiff movements and trundling towards the warmth of the bar.

The (Screen) Times, They Are A-Changing

I became annoyed during my trip because of the number of people I saw staring, or poking away, at phones. 

The delivery trucks had apparently shown up at the Winn Dixie and a crew of mostly people of color all had buds in their ears and were talking away as they worked. Good luck trying to find out what aisle the raisins are in from any one of them. Some were kind of hiding behind stacks of boxes in the aisles, poking away at phones, and not even seeming to notice me.

When I went outside, I saw a scraggly looking white guy who looks to be about 18 years old, squatting down along a wall, apparently taking his break and, yup, poking away at his phone. 

I have seen him before and he has never said a word to me or acknowledged me in any way, but has been in the same spot, poking at the phone, sometimes with a cigarette in his mouth. He seems like the most antisocial sort imaginable, and never even seems to talk to any of his co-workers whenever I see him in the store.

That is probably because he is white and there is a tacit agreement that he and the people of color will work together, and he will be tolerated, as long as he doesn't try to speak to any of them. 

Out of the dozen or so workers that I either passed by in the aisles, or saw putting stuff on shelves near where I checked the amounts of sodium in cans of tuna fish or whatever, none of them spoke to me. 

I started seeing them as being retarded; but had to change that to a more positive thought like; this is the way the world is becoming; soon everyone will be walking around with virtual reality helmets on; being in some different world while they walk through this one...

The white kid who skulks over to his break spot to poke at his phone reminds me of a squirrel that some of my neighbors growing up used to feed. They started putting things like Ritz crackers out for the thing, which eventually would come right up and be waiting on their welcome mat for more Ritz crackers. It eventually lost its ability to climb trees and forage for nuts and its fir started thinning out to the point where its tail was so threadbare that you could see the bone through what was left of the fir on it. That tail wouldn't serve it very well if it were to fall out of a tree, but it didn't have to worry about that, only about hanging around the entrance to the Emby's (as that was the family's name) house.

The Emby's took a 2 week vacation in Florida the winter after they had "befriended" the rodent and when they returned, they found the thing nearly wasted away and shivering near their doorway, and, despite their attempts to revive it with more junk food, they found its dead body soon thereafter, looking like it had been attacked by something, perhaps crows.

i-rodents

That is what the phone poking kid reminds me of. The hair on his head kind of looks like the squirrels fir did. I suppose if you were to criticize him for being anti-social, he would retort: "Dude, I'm on 12 different social networks!" though he wouldn't say it to the accuser;s face, but would mumble it with his head tilted down towards his phone. The disturbing thing is that he is just one of a whole breed of "them." They even carry themselves with a bent at the neck posture, and might quickly look your way, but divert their gaze back to their phones before making eye contact. Like i-rodents.

Then, I rode by a fat man of color whom I had seen on my way to the store, sitting in a blue SUV with its motor running, his face aglow from his phone's screen. He was still there; still aglow. I don't think he noticed me riding by either time. A little further up the road; another glowing face behind the wheel of another vehicle..

And, on it went. Every person I encountered during my trip was either staring or poking at a phone, with the exception of one large white man who was walking in the road ahead of me as I approached, and who had moved to the sidewalk by the time I passed him. He gave me a leery glance that gave me the impression that he was out walking, so as to come down some off of crack -so that after he returned to his place, the walk, with the fresh air and exercise might have made it so he could get somewhat high again when he took his next hit.

Is it any stretch of the imagination to believe that the CEO's of Facebook and Google and Tik Tok probably think that they rule the world?