Texting While Doing Anything Else

Introduction: This Foolishness...Or Is It? was written last night. This morning’s newspaper tells me that one of the two legislators I had written about has backed off on his proposed legislation (Arkansas). The other is charging ahead (New York). Since he is doing so, this posting is still relevant and certainly ought to be read by all clear thinking Americans.

I have ranted before about those of us (too many of us) texting while driving. We are now passing laws to try to protect the dumb from doing the stupid. Am I not being plain enough? Let me put it this way, texting while driving a moving vehicle is dumb. Those of us who do this are the stupid.

There is an elected official in New York who has proposed legislation to stop us from walking and texting.

I think Walking is not the same as Driving. Can you believe I said that? We have a major epidemic of stupid driving in this country and this legislator is worried about that lady in that shopping mall the other day that walked into a fountain while texting and got wet.

This legislation is in the process of getting Foolish. Here is some of the silliness...

• Anyone walking with two ear pieces in their head (one in each ear) will be considered in violation. A single ear piece is OK.
• This legislation is only proposed to be enforced in cities with a population of 1,000,000 or more.

Now I could stop this Foolishness...Or Is It? right here and now and it would be complete. It has exposed more of the Foolishness that surrounds us all. I could be done... But am I?

I have thought about the above bullets and I wish to expand and clarify...

• What is this about only being an issue in cities of 1,000,000 people and more? Are not those who live in small cities in as much danger as people who live in large cities? Ignoring small town walker’s safety is unconscionable!
• A determination as to what the walker is listening to will have to be made before the Ear Piece Police can swoop in and make the appropriate life-saving arrests...
•    Classical Music is soothing and an aid to concentration while hard rock music is mind muddling and a hindrance to walking. We need only be concerned with hard rock music.
•    What about Talk Radio? Does not opposing opinions cause the Liberal to get excited when he hears Conservative commentary and the Conservative get excited when he hears Liberal commentary? Either opinion contrary to the walker’s strongly held beliefs could contribute to dangerous walking.
•    Obviously our Federal Government is going to have to invest 10 or 20 million dollars to develop Ear Piece Penetrators to ascertain exactly what the Ear Piece Equipped Walkers of America are listening to.
•    Another bunch of millions will have to be invested in Segways for the Ear Piece Police to get around on to do their ear piece penetrating.
•    Actually the Segway expense will have to be doubled so that, once a potential violator is zeroed in on, there may have need for another Segway on the other side of the listener, if the single ear piece is inserted on the opposite side. This increase in expense may cause the provision in the bill for single ear pieces to be scrapped. Our Federal Government certainly would not want to get carried away with this enforcement policy... Or would it?
• As an alternative to Segway Monitoring we could always use our extensive satellite system to monitor walkers. Some may object to this diversion of our satellites to endangered walkers. I am sure that cooler heads will prevail by saying, “The heck with terrorists! This is important!”.
• As is usually the case, there will have to be exemptions. The most obvious and sure to be universally accepted exception will be NBA Basketball Players. These American Tattooed Heroes are always shown walking into the arena before the game with ear phones on their well paid ears. There will certainly be no objections to this exception because they are tall and important and we are neither.

Would I kid u?