While standing in a queue recently, a man in front of me was in full conversation on his mobile phone. The conversation wasn't life or death stuff but inane chatter about soccer, what he might have for supper and an odd series of comments about Hat Sizes (Well I hope it was hat's he was referring to). I am unsure if the members of the queue were irritated or entertained but the conversation ended and as poor man slipped the phone into his pocket he looked at me and said; "The mobile's a great yoke". "Mighty", I replied; wondering what he meant by the term "yoke"?
Where I grew up it was a much-used term but always in a negative context. For example, if you accidently dropped something and it broke, the reprimand could start with the words "What kind of a yoke are you?” My general understanding is that this word refers to the part of the harness that linked a horse onto a plough and, as a consequence, to be called a yoke you were being referred to as a burden or unending toil. The wonders of the world wide web has confirmed this to be the case. "A bar used with a double harness to connect the collar of two horses to the pole of a wagon or coach. It has connotations of subservience, in ancient cultures it was traditional to force a defeated enemy to pass beneath a symbolic yoke", according to Websters On Line dictionary. I am not sure if the man’s reference to the phone as a yoke had that meaning, but it could be an apt description.
It has caused me to give some consideration to my mobile phone habits and on reflection they are not great … to be honest they are dire. But I have to conceitedly admit that because of the age of my phone (it looks like a brick) it doesn’t have those annoying ring tones, all it does is ring or beep. . A certain councilor in Clare County Council is notorious with the Tulla Ceile band coming from his pocket every time his phone goes off at meetings ,, but I suppose it is better than the “Who let the Dogs out” by the Baha Men which filled a restaurant I was in recently when every phone in the place seemed to have it as its ring tone . And where people had full detailed banal conversations on the phone completely ignoring their dining partners.. . Look I have had enough. Let me emphasise that I'm no luddite. I think mobile phones are great and serve a very useful purpose. But the days when being important enough and impressing those around you by urgently taking a call on the mobile while in a queue or at a dinner table or in a meeting or in the loo simply doesn’t work. Its time the subject of good phone etiquette was introduced as a leaving cert. subject.