Christmas time..family here…silence?
I say to six folk here in the living room,” anyone want a brew?” Silence.
“Anyone want a brewwww?”in a more demanding yet chilled way. Nothing.
Nothing. So nudged the first family member “Want a brew?” “Eh? Oh, erm, hmmm….erm..ok, please” …which triggered an avalanche of comments pouring down the audio waves with various requests of liquid forms. Then silence.
Returns ten minutes later, places said requests to appropriate family members. (I did write down who wanted what just like in a cafe service as there’s no way I could ever remember six varying requests, sometimes I can’t even remember my own request for a brew I want!)
Distributing five drinks with ‘silence’ as their replies, I nudged the sixth recipient as I placed their drink down. ” Oh, thank you!” came the response followed again by an avalanche of ‘thank yous’ from the other five. Then silence.
I stood at the doorway of the living room looking at each of them. They were obviously engrossed with their mobile phones…face-booking, inst-a-gramming, real-reel-and-virtual-real-reel watching, bar-gain-hun-ting to name a few things I could see they were engrossed with as I placed each cup next to them. Standing their looking at them all, it was just as if they were all just strangers sat in a ‘Library,’ a ‘digital library’ engrossed in their own world, doing their own thing, in silence. There was no need to act like a Librarian authoritively and periodically saying out loud “Shhhh, this is a library, no talking” it was just silence, total silence. No communication between any family member. Just as if they were total strangers!
I guess that’s a modern equivalent of the traditional Library, just relocated to the living room of your own home!
now time for my own cup-of-T
Telstales 