Who Gets Top Prize?


As a movie I was attending began, the audience heard a familiar sound--a ringtone.
(And it was not that cutesy pre-movie public service announcement where the phone rings as Native Americans hunt buffalo.)

The next sound, however, was not familiar. One of our comrades in the audience yelled out, " Turn off your f%^&*ing phone!!!"

We all laughed.

I thought about this later...was anything really funny? But what I forgot was that there a thing called nervous laughter. The man who yelled sounded so hostile, that collectively, the rest of us probably decided to break the tension by laughing.

I get as annoyed with cell phone use as the next person. And I don't like to hear cell phones ring at movies, funerals, weddings, or any of the many other occasions that usually require you to focus on the people/events present, rather than entities that are absent.

Still...which pollutes more: the cell phone ring or someone's angry, expletive-laced reaction to it?