TURN OFF THAT CELL PHONE! Bare your soul in private.

Jane, don't hang up! Jane, talk to me. Jane, Jane, jane! As everyone on the Amtrak train in the vicinity of his cell phone could attest, Jane deigned to answer her husband. The couple seemed to be having difficulties with their daughter, who also took a turn in their prolonged conversation. One call led to another, and for two and one-half hours, nearby passengers were involuntarily privy to the loud personal conversations of this cell-phone enthusiast. Other people in the surrounding seats were also making and receiving calls (briefer and less loud), but Jane's husband took the prize for insouciant intrusions into our shared public space.

I dearly wanted to say something to him, and started to frame a protest as I heard him announce in his last call that he was only twenty minutes from his station stop. How could I peacefully, nonviolently, state my objections and confront what appeared to be either deliberate rudeness or invincible ignorance? Unfortunately, my own invincible cowardice and over-socialized taboo against public displays of irritation doomed me to hesitation, and a lost opportunity. At least I can lodge a complaint with the conductor, I thought. But when I found him, he was in a back seat busily talking on his cell phone.

Who will deliver us from this new plague? Second-hand intimacy is even more agitating than second-hand smoke. Don't the users of cell phones understand that they are breaking the implicit rules of public behavior? Everyone has a right to civil inattention and a buffer zone safe from unwanted intrusions by touch, leering stares, or intrusive personal remarks. I don't want to be ogled, pushed, pinched, or have my ears assaulted. Involuntary immersion in other people's intimate lives, audibly broadcast in trains, buses, planes, elevators, or on the street, is a subtle form of battery. Never mind the danger cell phones present in automobiles.

If there are laws against boom boxes, car alarms, and leaf blowers, why not against cell phones? At least we could have special train cars or segregated sections for those who must intrude on other people's privacy. In New York, the opera and Broadway theaters seem to have gotten the problem under control. The stern preshow announcements are followed by audience compliance-- probably because of the astronomical prices of today's tickets. At the other extreme, a subway token buys immunity from cell phones, because there is no reception underground. Stolid impassive crowding isn't so bad, if you can read or think your own thoughts.

Am I overreacting? Not really. I deny the charge of being a noise-pollution freak. I live above the railroad tracks and delay conversations twice hourly while trains roar by. I also don't mind hearing the tugs chugging up the Hudson. I find the beep-beep of the newspaper trucks backing up at 4 a.m. less attractive, but I tolerate them patiently, along with the noise in our apartment house where neighbors constantly reconstruct kitchens or install new in-the-wall air conditioners. With our bouncy, squealing four-year-old granddaughter in residence, I could never complain about other people's racket.

I don't object to cell phones because they are noisy. With this growing imposition of second-hand intimacy and forced communication, I'm offended by the erosion of shared cultural norms of appropriate shame. Certain kinds of self-exposure flout the rules for personal boundaries. When other people don't understand, or don't care, I become ashamed for them, since they are too ignorant or crude to be ashamed of themselves. Public confessions on TV talk shows make my skin prickle. Lovers who insist on sexual displays in public give the lie to evolutionary psychology's dictum that in every known human culture sexual intimates seek privacy. Some things are best kept in the closet.

Once, in a hair salon, I was dozing under towels and gradually became aware of a long tirade coming from a young woman across the room. She was baring her soul to the beauty operator (or hair artiste) in a bitter complaint about her mother-in-law's awful behavior. As the story went on and on, and the names of other siblings in the family came up, I slowly realized that I knew this daughter-in-law (certainly no Ruth to a Naomi). She was berating my old friend, whom I'd always admired. Horrors! How could I become invisible? I sank down in my chair, raised a magazine before my face, and prayed that I would not be recognized. (I wasn't.) As an innocent bystander, I knew that I had done nothing wrong. I did not feel guilty, but I was instinctively embarrassed at overhearing private family matters that I had no business knowing.

Surely, such attacks of shame and embarrassment over personal exposure reflect our human sense of solidarity and identification with others. Noah's children were ashamed to see him lying naked in a drunken stupor. When we see friends or family members get drunk, fall down, and make fools of themselves, we suffer vicarious shame for them. (W.C. Fields is not funny.) When waiters drop trays, performers forget their lines, and folks make God awful speeches at weddings or wakes, we try to save face by pretending nothing untoward has occurred--if we can't actually flee the scene. I'm often the one edging out the door at such times--at least out of the range of the omnipresent video cameras.

The culture seems to be heading in a more shameless direction. People are putting their intimate lives on Web sites, and new TV programs are scheduled that will cover a person's every move for twenty-four hours a day. Realistically, there's little imminent hope for laws curbing cell phones. It would interfere with a booming market. Until saturation or cultural conversion takes place, I may be forced to buy a Walkman and program it with white noise.