Can you hear me now?*

It never ceases to amaze me what some people will talk about on their cell phones. Loudly. In public. In front of a group of people who are obviously not doing anything distracting and are therefore totally listening to what the person on the phone is saying.

What happened that caused me to make this comment? I was reminded of the above today while I was sitting in the hallway outside my classroom, waiting for my teacher to get there and let us in. I, along with about 10 other people, was lucky enough to be able to sit there and listen to this guy talk on the phone to a friend (who I could also hear talking, so I know the volume was turned WAY freaking up) about all sorts of fun stuff – like how he gets randomly drug tested so he won't be able to do something today, but he might in the next few days, once he gets tested again. We also learned that his mom is rich, that he's on probation, that his P.O. might let him stop drug testing because he knows the kid doesn't have the money to pay for it or to buy drugs. (Ha ha! Good luck with that one, buddy!) He also told his friend a lovely story about how his P.O. knows his mom is rich, but that it doesn't make any difference to the P.O. now because she wrote a note to his P.O. that said, "Fuck you! I'm not going to help him out financially anymore." Oh, and he also put $1500 down on some stuff (I'm assuming before he got arrested), but obviously, all that money is basically lost now.

Let's see…what else? Umm…I think that's pretty much it.

All I know is that I have no freaking idea what purpose him talking that loudly about that kind of stuff in front of that many people is supposed to serve. Were we supposed to think he's cool or something? Yeah...not so much.

To me, it just seems incredibly stupid to be a) on probation for a drug-related charge, b) talking to a friend on a cell phone in a public hallway within the hearing of 10 to 15 witnesses and c) talking about doing something illegal and drug-related in the next few days. After he went into his class, I mentioned to the other people waiting in the hallway with me that I should have taken my digital voice recorder out of my purse and hit "record" and then casually asked him what the name of his P.O. is.

Generally, if I have to talk on a cell phone, I go to my car or to a quiet corner somewhere. If I ever have the occasion to talk about anything illegal, I definitely don't do it on a cell phone – which can sometimes be listened to on police scanners, short-wave radios, other people's cell phones and the rare baby monitor – and I sure as hell don't do it in front of 15 random people. But that's just me. Maybe I'm weird in my cell phone use.

Fun side note: Between TheMister calling me 3 times tonight and the 500 times the puppy made me open the door so he could maybe go outside, maybe just stand there and attempt to use mind power to make the rain stop so going outside would be less unpleasant and/or maybe staring at me until I put on my coat, went outside with him and watched him eat snow, it took me around 6 hours to write this blog entry. Now I remember why I don't write blog entries very often anymore.