Pity the Thumbstruck

We must be devolving at a rapid rate, as we have come to dislike the smartphone with a certain intensity that is nearing that cross-the-line moment of slapping the phones out of the hands of strangers.  Having owned a cellphone in various guises since the coal-fired days of a Motorola clamshell, we’re not technological Luddites.  We get the connected, agile workforce meme and understand why it is important to a boss.  It’s a load of manure, but we get it.

Certainly, realtors, doctors, on-call technologists and several dozen other professions need that always-connected technology to respond to situations.  No question and no issue either.  What we don’t get is the head-down, but still moving lopsided gait of the Thumbstruck. 

You’ve seen them walking purposefully along the sidewalk, then suddenly, as if someone had thrown a switch, their head ducks, their walking skills deteriorate to that of a toddler with a full diaper ambling from side to side at best, or totally paralyzed.  You keep waiting for them to fall over, face-plant into a light pole or stagger into the side of a bus.

Downtown street corners are notorious for the Thumbstruck.  Well-dressed, prosperous, allegedly intelligent business people suddenly gone rigid, except for the fingers and thumbs, incapable of locomotion and completely unable to get out of the way.  They stand like momentary Polynesian sentinels, fixated on their thumbs, impervious to their surroundings and the pigeon crapping on their shoulder.    

Grocery stores are terrible places to see the Thumbstruck.  Mother, Father, two yard apes in full sugar binge scream, a cart full of processed food and she comes to a dead halt in mid-aisle, intently pecking away in a Grand-mal Thumbstruck seizure that rends her incapable of movement.  Father stares off into middle distance, distracted by the shiny bags of Cheezie Poofs, oblivious to the savage fruit of his loins who are attempting to stab each other with the sharp corner of a tetra pack of juice and a set of grilling tongs. 

A full minute later, Mom comes out of her seizure and shares the earth-shattering issue.  Was it a sudden need of the launch codes by NATO?  Was her input vital to the stock market and the spot price of copper?  Did Obama need her immediate feedback on how to avoid the debt ceiling crisis?  Father blinks once, twice and then one last time, surfacing from his Cheezie Poofs reverie, his attention leaning towards the current environment, still oblivious to the children engaged in gladiatorial combat.

No.  “Cathie wants me to pick up some raisin bread for her for next week but not the Sun Maid brand, just the generic store kind as she’s making her French Toast and she’ll leave the money on the back deck under the gnome.” 

Father blinks twice more in comprehension, his head nodding in that peculiar husband-mode known as “I am not listening to you, dear” as Mom returns to her Thumbstruck seizure, while attempting to push the cart at the same time, bumping forward into the display of previously frozen crab legs, blocking the entire width of the aisle for another minute.  It would seem that the Thumbstruck lose all visual acuity and problem-solving abilities when in mid-episode, as Mom could not comprehend how to back up a shopping cart. 

Father wisely returned to Cheezie Poofs land, having seen something shiny reflect off the Mylar packaging and was again incapable of movement, standing directly behind Mom, the cart full of groceries and howling children who were now engaged in attempted mutual self-trepanation using cans of cat food as medical instruments.

Her seizure concluded and the smartphone merely clutched desperately in her hand, Mom suddenly recognizes she is in a grocery store, with a cart stuck against a freezer and two familiar looking children trying to open each others’ thoracic cavities with frozen perogies.  

Is she contrite, or even vaguely embarrassed?  Of course not.  In fact, she looks angry that the other shoppers have delayed her for the last five minutes.  How dare they!

The Thumbstruck.  Incapable of movement.  Incapable of conscious thought.  Incapable of anything except the ability to move their thumbs.  Filled with the fat sense of entitlement that they’re cutting edge communications-critical, they’ve become the sidewalk and store bollards to which Stupidity binds its lines to our society.

Pity the Thumbstruck.