Take me back. Do you remember that song?

Anyway, there was something interesting I was thinking about the other day. I was thinking about how all of us have three hands. We have two hands with which we are born, and a third hand called a cell phone that we purchase from T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T or Verizon.

Sometimes that third hand really ruins conversations and connection with other people. It also causes that really annoying feeling you get when you’re hanging out with someone and they are constantly responding to their phone.

In life, we don’t always need to get back to people right away. Go back ten or fifteen years when we had cell phones with unlimited minutes and which didn’t have email capabilities. Back then, you weren’t able to return an email or check your voicemail every minute of the day.

Do you remember the days when we weren’t texting people in restaurants, and we actually paid attention to the person across the table from us? Remember when we didn’t feel the need to immediately get back to the person on the other end of a text?

Do you remember the days when we used to have an office, and we used to check and return messages just while we were there? We didn’t feel the need to get back to someone at 10:00 pm on a Friday.

We need to disconnect from our cell phones just a little bit, because it’s starting to kill intimacy between between people. It’s starting to kill moments.

I personally find it really offensive when I am out with someone, and they look at and respond to messages on their cell phone. It makes me think, “What about me? I’m here. My time is definitely worth something. Why can’t you give me the time that I need right now? Why do I need to watch you get back to somebody?”

We’ve become a society that has to answer people right away for no reason at all. Pay attention to the person in front of you. The other person will just have to wait like the good old days for an answer.