Stopping in the Bar on a Snowy Evening

Last night--

I was waiting at the airport last night, sitting in a bar and text messaging with one of my dear friends from high school who couldn't join me for our reunion this weekend. Next to me was a nice looking man, about my age maybe a scosh younger and the woman sitting next to me was a bit older. All three of us were engaged in our blackberries or--in my case--mobile phone chatting with people far removed from the bar rather than chatting with one another like in the good old days of fleeting airport lounge connections. Technology has changed all of that. In the past we would have maybe exchanged a few words, lightheartedly discussing the baseball game on the television. But nowadays we are exchanging disembodied Tweets or texts. Thankfully, text messages have made things a little quieter and I don't have to listen to someone else's intimate details. But it's now so quiet we forget to interact with one another and we have become a small planet of strangers. It occurred to me to break the silence of the tapping fingers but I didn't really want to talk to either person near me aside from proving the art of small talk between strangers in the airport on a snowy evening is not going the way of print journalism or civility.