Civility, She is Dead

At the movies tonight and the two women across the aisle were continually texting people. These ladies were not teens, they were in their 30's. Every ten minutes or so, the one closest to me would take out her phone and type something to someone, then put her phone back in the pouch of her hooded sweatshirt.

At about the sixth time she did this, I crouched across the aisle to her seat and said "could you please stop texting, the light is very bright and it's distracting."

"I'm not texting," she said "I was just turning my phone off."

"You were texting," I said, "I've been watching you the whole movie."

"No I wasn't, you jerk."

Okay, now let's step back a bit. Clearly I DID see her. It's not as if I did not realize that her thigh had some sort of radiation problem, where it glows in the same cellphone-blue light of, you know, a cellphone. It's a dark theater, I'm watching the lady type by the light of her own phone. Why would she choose to say she hadn't been texting? What's up with that? Did she expect "Oh, yeah, sorry this must be the first time you've done that, I don't know how I could be so very wrong. I'll just pop off to the neurologist now and see what all these bright spots are about."

Also, she was actually in the process of texting on her phone when I walked over. Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't know what that looks like? And how it doesn't look the same as, you know, turning off your phone?

Comments

[Jenni]

I got this lesson myself when I first started texting. I went into NYC to catch a movie that wasn't being released here- sat down, the movie started, I got a text. I opened my phone for I think one one-millionth of a second and three ladies descended to me from various parts of the theatre behind me talking very loud and aggressively, "Turn that off, it's distracting" "The light is too bright" "Turn it off, turn it off NOW". Scared the crap out of me!
I had never texted in a theatre before and I could definitely see how distracting it was. In that case I think they could've given me the benefit of the doubt and let one slide. I wasn't going to text through the movie.
P.S. Phones should have a dark mode just in case though.