--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sit at a table
in the common area of the campus building, watching my college classmates as
they adhere to their scholastic schedule.
Candy wrappers crinkle as the elevator door opened to admit the one lone
rider who throws his empty candy wrapper in the trash can between the two
elevators before entering the small roving room. The electronic eye, that made sure no one was
between the doors before they closed and allowed the elevator to make its
assent to the upper floors, failed to see the two other people scurrying to
catch the vertical taxi cab, and they merely ended up exhaling a sigh of
exasperation as one of them hit the call button three times, as if that would
get the elevator back even faster.
A young lady walks
down the hamster tunnel connecting the two buildings on campus, hitting the
large blue button labeled with a stick-figure in a stick-wheelchair so she
wouldn’t have to open the door herself.
Her light touch failed to engage the opener’s mechanism but she just
stood there for a couple of seconds before she took the two steps back to hit
it again, not thinking if she had just gone ahead and pushed the door open
manually she would have been well on her way by now.
The tall kid with
blonde hair walks by with his head down and his fingers busy on his phone, too
heavily engaged in his own electronic conversation to notice he was walking
past a young lady at the center table heavily engaged in the same intense
activity, both of them alone and surrounded by a sea of invisible friends
through their electronic connection to a social life.
The dozen or so
computers are all in use, each person focused on their screen, oblivious to any
activity around them. It is so
quiet. There are no conversations, no
questions going back and forth, no joking, no banter. Small white wires can be seen hanging out of
the ears of some of the computer users and walker-by’s, locked into their own
silent world of sound, closing out any of the outside sounds around them, not
really aware of the sounds of life they are missing.
