I was in high school the first time I heard someone blasting their music that wasn't in a car. I've heard people blasting music out of their cars for years, but to hear portable music being played at car stereo levels was a new thing to me.
It was 1984, and I was a high school student sitting in the Ball State University student center when two kids from my school walked past with a giant boombox.
Boomboxes in those days came with big gramophone horns, and you had to wind them so you could play music on wax cylinders. At least that's what my kids seem to think. They don't understand "ancient history," which is what they call my childhood.
These guys were strutting down the hall, one of them shouldering the giant boombox like Atlas carrying the world as it played awesome music.
It's the song that turned me into a New Wave kid in the mid-1980s. While all my friends were metalheads and loved loud guitars and wearing mullets, I was into the synth-rock and post-punk music from the UK.
It was a life-changing moment: if I hadn't been in that place at that very moment, I would have missed hearing one of the most influential bands of my life.
Of course, less than 30 seconds after this life-changing moment, some stuffed shirt marched out and ordered them to turn off that noise.
What a philistine! This amazing music traveled 4,000 miles on a plastic tape cassette to reach my ears and some bourgeois snob who hated anything created before the 1850s was ruining my life-defining moment.
Still, the die had been cast, and the river of my musical journey had been diverted. Rather than being an annoying metalhead whose idea of rebellion was wearing jeans with holes in them, I became one of the only New Wave kids in my high school.
A lot has happened in the last 20 years since 1984. (Yes, 1984 was 20 years ago!) While I still love the Art Of Noise and that entire genre of music, I now find myself sympathizing with the old guy who doesn't want to hear a bunch of noise blasting out of other people's phones.
People are unaware of their bad manners, and they don't care who they disturb. They believe they're in an invisible soundproof bubble that shields them from everyone's disapproving looks.
They yowl and screech with the other person, speaker volume cranked up to 11, about private issues they should discuss at home with the doors locked and curtains drawn.
Just a few tables away, there are two people having a private one-on-one conversation in the same coffee shop, and they speak in hushed tones so they won't be overheard. Or maybe I just can't hear them very well because my eardrums have been blasted by the nearby performance art piece called "Did You Or Did You Not Sleep With My Sister Again?"
They don't care if they're disturbing anyone around them and they don't care whether we hear them.
I know this because I once interjected some helpful advice into the conversation, which the other person didn't appreciate.
She said, "Do you mind, this is a private conversation."
I said, "It's clearly not, since we can all hear you."
She didn't like that, so she left.
It doesn't matter what they're talking about or who's around. These loud phone talkers could be arguing about their sex lives or listening to their mother talk about the big mole on her stomach that pulsates with her heartbeat.
On the other side of me, there's someone watching TikTok videos that all start with "SUP Y'ALL, IT'S YA BOY. BE SURE TO SMASH THAT LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE BUTTON LIKE YOU'RE AN AX MURDERER!"
The only thing I want to smash is their phone, but I'm told this is against the law.
Look, just remember that speakerphones are not really for public use. They're better suited for when you're in the privacy of your own home or car. Otherwise, put in some earbuds or hold the phone up to your ear.
Nobody wants to listen to your phone on full blast. It's rude and obnoxious. And if you don't stop, I'll bring my boombox out of retirement, and then we'll hear some real Art Of Noise.
Photo credit: Guy with a Boombox, Emilio Labrador (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0) and Woman shushing a guy on a cell phone, Seattle University School of Law (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.