Will you just get off the cell phone, please?

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

I was in a restaurant the other night when my cell phone rang.

I almost never bring my cell into restaurants but, since I did, I answered it. And started talking. And talking. And talking.

Suddenly, the guy in the next booth turned around and glared at me like I'd just poured bleu cheese dressing down his neck.

And, really, who can blame him? I had become the very thing I despise: a cell-phone yacker with no clue how obnoxious I was being to those around me.

New technology is a good news/bad news proposition. In terms of cell phones, the good news is we can get and deliver information when we need to. The bad news is people everywhere are now having intimate conversations with dozens of strangers who don't give a rip. Who don't care that you're through security and are waiting for your flight at Gate 46. Who don't care that you're now on the boarding walkway. Who don't care that you're now seated in 7E and are going to read the in-flight magazine.

Airports and airplanes are the worst. I just returned from a trip and everywhere you go, people are walking around, wearing phone headsets, talking to everybody. You think they're talking to you.

You come out of a restroom in Denver and a man says to you, "Can we get the invoices out by the end of the day?" And you want to say, "Well, I dunno. I'm not sure." But then you realize he's not talking to you. He's talking to someone in Phoenix or Los Angeles or Singapore.

On airplanes, people talk on their cell phones until the last possible moment they're allowed. Goodness, for some people cell phones have become what air tanks are to scuba divers: lifelines.

It gets worse. In Chicago, there was a guy in a bathroom stall, talking as if he were Don Essig announcing a Duck game. Is no place safe from these manner-less oafs?

Cell-phone blabber has become the secondhand smoke of the new millennium. Innocent people are having conversations foisted on them. Conversations they don't want or need. Words they didn't invite but come barging in, like strangers loafing on your living-room couch.

Words like (Denver), "Yeah, I'm at the airport and just remembered I forgot to feed Benjie. Would you mind ... ." Words like (Washington, D.C.), "So, like, she's totally jealous because Rick ... ." Words like (Portland), "I'm on the ground. I know it's noisy but I'm on the ground. I'm on the -."

What do you want, pal, a standing ovation? We're all on the ground. Yippee! Now, why don't you take that phone and -.

"You never told me Awragon was so cold," someone else says to - oh, wait, they're not talking to you, they're just shouting, like people wearing headphones and singing along with a song, not realizing they're making complete idiots of themselves.

So what can we do about it, those of us who think we have the right to not have people conduct business or argue with their boyfriend or order their insulated squall pants from Land's End in our ears?

First, if employees where you're shopping are "celling out," don't shop there. At a coffee hut Thursday, an employee was talking on a cell when I arrived. Instead of hanging up, the person kept talking, like the "gobble-gobble" scene at the rent-a-car counter in "Planes, Trains & Automobiles." Enough. I don't demand rapt attention when someone's making my hot chocolate, just a hint of respect. "Thanks," I said, "but I changed my mind." And left.

Second, if you're a business, put up a "no cells" sign. The U.S. Postal Service has done so at its Gateway outlet.

Finally, try what the guy tried with me: a well-defined glare. (It worked. I apologized.) And if that fails, there's always The Group Glare.

Anything to tell people: We don't want your secondhand words.

Bob Welch can be reached at 338-2354 or at [e-mail].