I heard that

He started off as just a guy. With a cell phone attached to his ear, he gabbed to an unseen person as I was seated in front of my laptop waiting for a meeting to begin. He paced back and forth across the room, carrying on with great importance, as men on cell phones are want to do, his stance and posturing indicative of a high-stakes conversation – arms negotiations with Russia, perhaps, or the imminent signing of a big-ticket lefty to bolster the Red Sox bullpen. The gentlemen even wore a suit, and as we all know, movers and shakers don’t get things done without well-pressed pants and a Windsor knot.

 

We were the only two people in the room, the rest of the meeting’s attendees having yet to arrive. Nevertheless, I paid him little mind. He was engrossed in his phone call, and I was hooking up to the building’s Wi-Fi so I could check email and play dominoes against cotton farmers in Uzbekistan. Yeah, I’m a pretty big deal.

 

It’s not that I actively meant to eavesdrop. He was locked into his own world, I in mine. But sometimes, in these situations, a person says something that draws attention to itself; human nature is to listen.

 

“We’ll beat ’em!” he shouted at one point. “We’ll beat ’em like rented mules!”

 

Rented mules?

 

I was beginning to like this guy.

 

By most standards, it’s rude to listen in on other peoples’ conversations. If Mule Guy wanted to include me in this exchange, he would have pulled up a chair, put his mobil device on speaker phone, and delineated to both of us his theories regarding this mysterious beating. By the time he finished, I’d know where the mules could be acquired, why they deserved such unforgiving treatment, and the best methods for inflicting said punishment. Personally, I’d think the best way to teach a mule a lesson would be to strap him to a wooden kitchen chair, prop his eyes open Clockwork Orange-style, and force him to watch a Pauly Shore marathon while a stereo blasts the selected musical works of Barry Manilow. Cruel and unusual, yes, but at least you don’t have to hit anything. PETA would be proud.

 

Only something’s happened over the past decade or so. With cell phones becoming near-ubiquitous, people seem to care less about potential eavesdroppers overhearing their most private and eyebrow-raising conversations. And now that phones are “smart,” it’s much easier to share with strangers all your best anecdotes about the time you got your chest waxed in Bermuda. The lines have blurred. Nobody’s business is everyone’s business, the world a carnival peep-show.

 

Technology has brought us many wonderful things: The automobile, Double-Stuffed Oreos, edible underwear and the Slinky, to name the most important. Yet clearly it’s a double-edged sword, because I find myself knowing way too many things about people I care way too little about. I make a conscious effort to limit my Facebook friends to people I actually know in real life, because the last thing I need is to log onto my account and see vacation photos from my college roommate’s brother’s former landlord’s daughter-in-law’s second cousin with the Motley Crue tattoo. Oh, Bobby Blubberbooger spent the summer in Amsterdam and contracted syphilis from a tranny named Snake? That’s fantastic! Pardon me while I smash my face repeatedly with a waffle iron.

 

Perhaps I’m overreacting.

 

But those are the kinds of things that happen when our fascination over technological goo-gaws makes us less protective of our privacy. Just a few short years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to hear Mule Guy’s side of the conversation without lurking outside his kitchen window and infiltrating his abode with high-tech surveillance equipment, the kind used by CIA operatives and dashing Tom Cruise movie characters. Now all I have to do is stand within earshot and pretend that I’m really concerned about my cuticles. 

 

There’s a new term that’s cropped up recently called “Facebook stalking.” It sounds like what it is: You go to someone’s Facebook page – an ex-lover, perhaps, or a guy you suspect of bilking your friend out of poker money – and you root through posts and photo albums, travel histories and video game scores. It’s creepy, to be sure, on the level of Peeping Toms and saps who play love songs on stereos outside girlfriend’s apartment windows. All that information, though, wouldn’t be there unless people tossed it up voluntarily. Maybe you’re having a verbal conversation in a public place, à la Mule Guy; maybe you’re going online and sharing photos of the time you went bungee jumping dressed in a ballerina tutu. The fact remains that, despite the encroachments of technology, privacy is still largely a choice.

 

Every generation deviates from the one previous in its morals and attitudes; it’s how a society evolves. But technology has created a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the ages, not so much a line in the sand as a silicon wall. A life lived in the open is a concept incomprehensible to those who came of age amidst turntables and rotary phones. My own generation is unique in that it straddles that line – the Internet grew up along with us, and so while we’re generally comfortable using these gadgets and know how to apply them, we remember a time before hyperconnectivity and social media apoplexy over the nutritional merits of lentil soup. 

 

As a result, we see both sides of the coin. The general consensus is this: Cell phones are great, Facebook is fun, and take as many digital photos as your memory card’ll store. At some point, however, your business gets gratuitous. Pull the reins up, ol’ hoss.

 

Sometimes a person wants to round up the transgressors and beat ’em like rented mules. And hey, I know a guy who’ll help.