So, I walked into a men’s restroom during a conference recently and observed a guy standing at the urinal with his arm raised and wrapped over his head to hold his cell phone up to his ear.

A proud moment as being his brother of sorts did not occur to me. Now we have all observed people talking on the phone or texting on their Blackberry obsessively and wondered what is up with them? The scene of this lavatorial contortionism struck me to think to myself. ENOUGH ALREADY!! While observing our urinal hero, I had to fight the urge not to activate all of the urinals to flush in unison with several waves of my hand. I paused with the realization that this self-important clod may beat me with his phone while continuing his conversation! If that would happen how much do you want to bet that no matter what type of hulkian rage this guy was engulfed in, he would stop if thankfully he heard a call waiting signal and he would be compelled to stop the beating and pick up!!

In a world of constant Access, omnipresent Availability, nearly preemptive Response, and Perpetually, I think we have truly lost our senses. If we revisit our egestive actor one more time, I can only think of a couple of scenarios that would partially justify calling someone while “going” in a public urinal. The first is he is a neurosurgeon with an enlarged prostate, was paged, one of his patients was taken to surgery, and he was remotely directing a colleague to conduct brain surgery. The second might be he has an enlarged prostate, works for the bomb squad, the timer is ticking down and he was talking someone through a detonation intervention. Now here’s the frightening truth, even if he was in either scenario and regardless of ramifications what would our hero do out of habit if he received an incoming call in the midst of his mission?

I see two viable eventualities, either he focuses on the single task at hand and ignores the distraction of the incoming call (unlikely) or he blows a blood vessel in his brain with the guilty prospect that he missed a call!

Granted this is an extreme example, but I submit for your consideration though we agree that it is extreme, is it really unrealistic? Or is it a slightly inflated reflection of god forbid who we have become? How did we get here? First, we had the answering machine at home and voice mail at work. This was a convenient advancement to manage our communications to accept messages when we were UNAVAILABLE. That seems reasonable.

Then we needed (wanted) to access our messages remotely. I guess the idea of being out of the office wasn’t a good enough reason to return your call when we returned. No, we needed to be able to call our answering machine or voice mail to retrieve our messages remotely so we could generate another call list and get back to our callers quicker!

Next, email, the Internet and cell phones came along. More tools that we will learn to mismanage and we have! Perhaps our goal is to reduce and to ultimately eliminate one freaking free unoccupied moment! Sorry, I got carried away. Hold on I have a call coming in…

Ok, where was I? Oh yes, isn’t it ironic that the more devices with power buttons that we possess render us more and more powerless! Just thought of that one, and no it isn’t perfectly thought out but I had an email that dinged by Inbox and I had to read it, so cut me some slack!

The only time that we turn off our electronic crutches are when the pilot orders us to so that to prevent us from becoming a permanent out of office memo. Or when the hospital’s ill-conceived policy of no cell phones are more concerned about keeping Aunt Bessie’s respirator working versus getting the call to indicate that someone was responding to an email that they cannot make a conference call, but that you can text them on their phone later with a call summary!

How about the traditional practice of hold my calls? By the way, the next time you need to focus on an important task, concentrate on a meaningful conversation, or here’s one, listen to your kid, turn your phone off or let it ring! Aren’t these the exact reasons why we have voice mail in the first place?

Ok, so now that we can confirm that we are all so much more “productive and organized” with our digital friends, what is the cost? In other words, what is the cost of constantly being contactobsessed (new word), thanks I like it too? How about the present? Could the present and your primary audience be the collateral damage of our compulsion to be “on” to all? I think so. How does the guy on the phone feel when he hears the melodic echoes of the toilets flushing while discussing decorum, for instance? Here’s some irony, I bet he feels P—ssed off! Wouldn’t you!

So where does our obsession end? Ring….Hello, no I cannot be on that call because I am on a gurney and headed to surgery. The procedure should only take three hours. They are doing a new procedure called a clue reclamation. Apparently, there is a very long waiting list for this procedure. I’ll call you back when I am in recovery or before!

So if we revisit our premise that we live unsettled by this world of constant Access, omnipresent Availability, nearly preemptive Response, and Perpetually. Do you think that this constant wave of communication is personally exhausting, if not aging?

constant Access

omnipresent Availability

nearly preemptive Response

and Perpetually

Hmmm….