Ghostwriting No. 19: Bubbleheads

Old people like me (I'm 32) often remark about the fact that kids these days will say anything while talking on a cellphone - even very private things - even in very public places. I do understand that privacy has been in decline basically since urbanization, which goes back thousands of years, not just a generation or two, but it still bothers me to hear a young person rating another's sexual prowess while browsing in my poetry section. On the other hand, along with the rest of the urban world, I am learning how not to listen to all the background noise, despite its exponentially growing quantity.

What really bothers me, though, is not that kids these days don't think twice about discussing their hidden bits in earshot of total strangers. It's that they really, really don't understand people without cellphones. That's what makes them bubbleheads: not a lack of intelligence, not the personal bubble they appear to imagine around themselves when they are plugged into the audio device of their choosing, but their apparent inability to comprehend that I do not have and do not want a cellphone of my own.

I do not want people to be able to reach me during the few hours I'm not at work. I do not want people to call me and to be forced to pay for the air time at both ends of the call, especially since it is apparently now acceptable for telemarketers to call cell phones. I do not want to pay more monthly bills or to purchase an expensive device that does more stuff. If I were a truck driver or a consultant and had children, I'd want them to be able to reach me, so I suppose I'd get a simple one. But I'm not and I don't.

This rapidly becomes symbolic of the insured-techno-debt-bubble outside which I live. Telemarketers earnestly pitch their plan to help me refinance my debt into one monthly payment. I tell them I only have one monthly payment already - a mortgage, low-interest; no car payments, no credit card debt. (It's one of the few perquisites of being a childless recluse.) More than a few have actually replied, "You're kidding. You've got to have a [big-box retailer] card or something."

Bubbleheads also don't understand why I have a problem with federally enforced purchase of health insurance. I'd rather put my money in a savings account so that I can afford to pay the doctor up front without making him or her do extra paperwork if I do get sick. This concept is apparently even more foreign than being debt-free. They argue that if I willingly buy state-mandated car insurance, I shouldn't have a problem with federally-mandated health insurance. The bubbleheads are completely bewildered by my answer, which is "I can sell my car." But seriously, does this entire generation take for granted that giving money to a corporation will somehow protect them against debt? Don't they hear about the people whose claims get denied? Don't they do the math and figure out how much of each monthly payment goes to administrative costs rather than health care? What kind of bubble are they living in?

A big one, evidently. I keep hearing things that make no sense to me, even from people old enough to know better. That they didn't know that credit cards cost merchants money to process. That they don't know who is running for the House of Representatives in their district. That they can't imagine how I've gone years at a time without buying a single thing at a 24-hour superstore. That they don't understand that collectibles (and cars, and houses, and stock shares) are only worth what someone else will pay for them, as opposed to what they paid or what a guide book says these items are worth. That they're miserable and overworked and afraid of their own debt, all of which I do understand; the economic weather is awful out there; but that they still can't imagine not being able to drive an SUV to an all-night store, call back to the house to check the shopping list and discuss what's on TV, and then pay for a gallon of milk with a credit card.

People talk about the growing gap between rich and poor. I don't know the numbers, so I won't comment. I do, however, see a growing gap between people who pay for the latest in the new standard of living and people who don't have those things/policies/investments, by choice or by necessity. It's a scary gap. Bigger than the generational rift between boomers and their parents. Bigger than the division in computer skills between people born before the internet and people born after. People still talked to each other on either side of those gaps, however hostilely or uncomprehendingly. But how can I even say 'hey, I'm sorry you're unhappy, I'd help if I could,' when everybody's always on the phone?