Smug or self-important?

It’s the same thing, and I’ll add selfish, if I may.

• The phone rings, you look at the caller id, you choose not to answer because the caller is yours truly – someone you usually call and speak to, either when:
  • you have to kill time while you’re waiting for your kid to come out through the school doors; or,
  • you’re waiting in queue at Costco; or,
  • when your fingers get itchy while you’re stuck in traffic; or,
  • while your partner is away on a business trip; or
  • when your kids are too busy on mySpace, and don’t need your attention. It’s so simple… you just hit the speed dial button to call me… quack quack quack…

• When you speed dial to call me during any one of the above situations, do you pause to think that I may have often been busy (or perhaps not in the mood), but am too polite to say so, regardless of when you call? That rarely have I turned away saying, “Let me go, I’m busy”, or, “I have another call”, or, “I’m snoozing”!
• Do you ever consider that when I call you it’s almost always to return your call which I missed while I was in the shower (or if I wasn’t at home), or if the phone was in use by someone at my end? Usually when that happens, I call back within moments of your call, by which time you’re already too busy to speak to me (what happened within moments that you then ‘politely’ say to me, “Can I call you back in two minutes?” almost as if to otherwise say, “I don’t need to speak to you just now but I’ll call again when it suits me”!
• That more often than not, whenever you’re speaking to me, soon after you’ve finished your bit of whatever it is you wanted to say, you claim you have another call “I have to go, there’s another call” is what you say, just about the time when you’ve finished and I may be trying to get in a few words after your 25-40 minute monologue! Can’t that other call wait? Surely it can’t be so urgent – your kids are at school, not calling their parents during school hours!
• Does it ever occur to you that I may be bored, wish to chat, or need some cheering up because the sun isn’t out and it’s dull and gray in my part of the world? That, for once, you should make the time through your ‘busy’ schedule and listen to me for a change, rather than be self-absorbed

Well, here’s my take on the subject… people with cellphones just have itchy fingers. We shouldn’t accuse young teenagers for their low attention spans. They pick it up from their parents may be; perhaps the grown-up adults suffer from more serious attention deficiency problems. If not that, then the only thing I can think of then is that such people lack consideration for others, are smug, and are thoughtlessly self-absorbed, not to mention lacking respect for others.