Yesterday I went into my wife’s office and she said she was troubled.
“I’ve been doing this thing I don’t like, talking on the phone and looking at my email. Sometimes I wonder if the other person is doing it too. And I know I’m missing things. Like today I got an email from [X magazine] and the editor had inserted an error into the first line of my story. I was freaked out and I know I missed stuff in the conversation, and I heard my friend’s voice get a little distant and I wondered if she was hurt and signalling that she knew I was looking at email– or maybe she was looking at email herself.”
I said, “Like what if she had just said, ‘My mother died.'”
“Yes and I’m going, Mmmm. Hmmm. Unh huh.”
“And you’re feeling bad about it?”
“I find I’m doing it more than I care to admit to myself. Like you get on that morning roll of telephone calls and I might be doing it with everyone.”
“I think a lot of people do it.”
She said, “Well that’s what I wonder. Remember people finally started talking about masturbation. You thought you were the only one doing it, but then it stopped being a big secret and it turned out that everyone did it, so big deal, the curtain went up on masturbation. And that’s what I’m wondering, is the curtain going to go up on looking at your email when you’re on the phone, Is everybody doing it?”
I said I thought everyone was doing it but the curtain wasn’t up yet. My wife felt better.
