A most obvious observation.

Women are incessantly on their cell phones. A most obvious observation for sure, but last night, in a mere matter of an hour, I witnessed 3 women talking on their cell phones. So what? I know, hang with me here.

I walk into a Mexican restaurant at 10 PM for dinner. It's a Tuesday night. A cute girl walks in and orders take out. We're the only ones in the place, save the cashier - a grandmotherly woman presumably named Rosa (the restaurant is called Rosa's), and two servers. The girl sits two tables from me and begins gabbing away.

This is where you say, "Yeah, so?" And I respond, "10 o'clock on a Tuesday at a divey (but yummy) Mexican joint in Hermosa, I wanna meet this girl." (Odds are she's single. If she were with a boyfriend they'd be eating out together. And no single girl eats out by herself in much the same ways guys do. You never see one sitting at the breakfast bar of a diner, a. because they don't want to be seen alone, b. it's not really safe to be alone at seedy joints with gloriously fatty food, and c. they don't want to be seen alone eating gloriously fatty food.)

Anyway, I at least wanted to catch her eye... maybe chat her up, get her number, make plans for the weekend... er I at least wanted the opportunity to do all of the above but wuss out at the last minute and regret it later. But the cell was a slap in the face. It was an electronic bodyguard which both shielded her from the world around her, and made it impotent to act.

Later, as if part of a film montage, driving home I'm stopped at a light to see a woman walking - on the phone. Car pulls up next to me, literally like a fast pan to the left, blond - on the phone.

I think women are increasingly living in two worlds - The Life, i.e. where they work and live and enjoy various planned activities; and The Phone. And everything else in between doesn't exist.