Two young women sat down at the table next to mine in a restaurant.
They began to talk, then one of them made the “wait-a-minute” gesture with her index finger. She pulled her cellphone from her purse, placed it on the table and stared at. And stared at it ... and stared at it.
Eventually, she entered some text into the phone, then smiled and said a few words to her companion. Then she stared at her phone again while her companion sat, studied the menu, sipped her drink, fidgeted.
When the waiter came to take their order, the companion shook her head, got up and quietly left. The woman on the phone didn’t notice.
The next day, I was in a store where I happened to see the same woman standing in front of me at the counter, still staring at her cellphone.
“May I help you?” the clerk asked her. But the woman continued staring at her phone. After a long pause, the clerk started helping me.
Then it hit me. I was witnessing a bona fide “trombie” (electronic zombie) in action – or inaction, as it were. And a chill crept over me as I realized: The zombies are already among us! They are multiplying, and they are taking over. It’s too late to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse, it has arrived – under the guise of connectivity.
You’ve seen trombies, too. People talking to themselves as if they’re deranged; but they’re actually talking on a cellphone. Then there are folks staring into their little screens at a baseball game, an art gallery, a dance or while driving.
They’re everywhere you are. But at the same time they’re not anywhere you are because they’re not where they are. They’re not in the present, not in their environment, not in their bodies – they’re not even in their minds. For their minds have been sucked into their tiny devices, and are imprisoned in some faraway place.
The whole phenomenon could be fodder for a short absurdist drama wherein trombies mill about on the stage staring at their phones and bumping into each other. (Someone walking while texting knocked a friend’s friend off a curb: She broke her ankle, but the perpetrator texted on without stopping.) At the play’s climax a character drops her phone, which screeches like a dying bird and goes silent. The other actors look up, drop their phones and stare at each other blankly as the curtain comes down.
Unfortunately the trombie phenom is not just perversely humorous – and its serious side has environmental implications. As someone who does what he can for the environment by riding a bicycle, I take one of them personally.
The Oregonlive website recently reported that Patrick Linden of St. Helens, Oregon, was riding in the bicycle lane (a marked shoulder) of U.S. Highway 30 and wearing his helmet when he was hit by a truck and killed. The report states, “An initial investigation indicates that (the truck’s driver) became distracted while looking at a text message on his phone, according to state police. His vehicle traveled onto the shoulder, where it struck Linden.”
Jeez. It’s hard enough negotiating roads where actual human beings are driving the cars and trucks. The trombies take the game to a whole new level.
Then there are the larger environmental issues to which the trombies are likely to contribute more than their share: cellphones, which typically work for about five years, tend to be used for one year and then discarded, increasing their impact in terms of resource depletion for manufacturing and pollution. Along with non-biodegradable plastics, cellphones contain enough toxic metal, mercury and other nasty stuff to exceed by 17 times the federal threshold for hazardous waste. And billions of cellphones are discarded worldwide each year.
You can find volumes of information about the environmental downsides and possible health hazard of cellphones using the Internet search words, “cellphone environmental impact.” It’s sobering reading.
And speaking of sobering, perhaps its time to re-evaluate the social and ethical mores that have made trombie behavior fashionable – or even acceptable – at our ecological house.
Philip S. Wenz, who grew up in Durango and Boulder, now lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where he teaches and writes about environmental issues. Reach him via email through his website, www.your-ecological-house.com.
