>Cell Phones Should Be Heard, Not Seen

>This post originally appeared on the Nashville Scene blog.

Outside Mafiaoza’s the other night, a young hotshot paced up and down the sidewalk, chopping the air with his hands.

“You think anyone’s gonna fall for that?” he asked a bewildered diner through the plate glass window. “Nonsense.” He turned angrily to a Land Rover parked beside him.

“This deal has got to go through this week!” he shouted at the SUV, which met his fury with a stony silence. Abruptly, his tone changed. “We’re talking millions of dollars,” he pleaded with the Rover’s bumper.

Oookay, I thought to myself as I warily edged past him. This guy’s one crayon short of a 24-pack. Suddenly, he turned to glance at me and it all became clear.

Dude was wearing a headset. A headset, if you don’t know by now, is the newest and nerdiest way to talk on the phone. Resembling something from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s prop department, the device fits on like an oversized robotic ear and allows its wearer to chat away to thin air as innocent bystanders look on in confusion and fear.

In fairness, I suppose they serve a purpose for some, as long as they’re in use. I’ve fumbled in the car for my undersized flip phone enough times to realize that a headset on the road is probably not a bad idea.

The problem I really have with headsets is that too many people, or more specifically, too many men, are wearing them as a, gulp, fashion statement.

I have seen headsets at a Sounds games, at Green Hills Mall, and even at the movies. The wearers are almost all pudgy guys in their twenties or thirties wearing relaxed corporate attire. I rarely see these men actually using their headsets; instead, it’s as if the mere presence of their ear apparatus is supposed to tell us something along these lines:

I’m so important that I must keep a phone to my ear at all times, regardless of the fact that no one will actually call me during the two hours I sit in front of you at the baseball game. The point is that someone could call and I would answer and pace up and down the stadium stairs while shouting and waving my hands and wondering if you’re all jealous that you are not me and you do not have an expensive cellphone attached to one ear.

At least, that’s what I derive from the self-conscious smirking and headset fumbling I witness when encountering these clods.

For the love of Bluetooth, boys, get those things off your ears when you’re out on the town. Chicks don’t dig headsets. Really. They don’t.