Ask Dan and Jennifer » cell phone

Getting Off….Your Phone!

Maryanne Comaroto — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:00:52 +0000

I was at one of my favorite local restaurants this past weekend and while I was waiting, I noticed two really cute little kids at a table with a well-dressed man who I assumed was their father. This assumed father in an expensive suit was perched like a penguin at a table and it appeared doing his college best to try and talk to his kids, who looked like they were on Prozac.

I thought, awwwww, how nice , a dad, with his kids (okay, yeah, I am a sucker). This guy was talking non-stop about something, blabbing on and on in the general direction of his kids, yet upon closer inspection I noticed the kids weren’t really paying attention at all. Now, clearly this was no company for Socratic dialogue – but still, there was no connect at all.

I thought, hmmm. Is he scolding them? Then I saw him laugh. No, that’s not it. Are they just to young to understand what he’s talking to them about? Yeah, I was really trying to figure out what was going on, to the point that I had almost forgotten what I was doing at the restaurant in the first place. I paid and glanced back over.

Disconnecting To Connect

Nope, same guy, same scene except…wait…a minute. Oh, no…is that guy? Could he be? No…. I squinted my eyes, looked closely across the room, and zeroed in on his ear reflected in the mirror, and sure enough…I swear I almost shouted “OH MY GOD, HE’S ON THE PHONE!!” I gasped instead. That whole time, instead of trying to do what I naively gave him credit for, almost shed a tear over, he was on the f-ing phone.

Now everything made sense. Now I saw why these kids looked like they were in a dead zone. Oh, the judgments flew, and they were flying everywhere. And you’re right; I didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. I was way beyond giving this guy the benefit of the doubt – to be fair he could’ve been on the phone with a sick relative, or talking another kid through a crisis.

So I caught myself – I didn’t know why this guy was on the phone, or why his kids looked drugged. And is it any of my business? Some would say no, some would say it takes a village.

A Responsibility To Your Family Or A Responsibility To Your Phone?

I see it so much now, parents-hell, people of all ages-who are with each other but not where they are, obviously wanting to connect, but not present to being connected. I watch young kids’ digits manipulate with their opposables, texting like fiends, like junkies, while in the car, while driving the car, parking, talking, walking, riding bikes, skateboards, eating in restaurants. It’s like we should all have the friggin’ phones surgically attached to our bodies! Or, how about, hang up the bloody phone once and a while?

Let’s take a look at what some modern-day respect and responsibility might look like …

If you are driving in the presence of other human beings, hang up the phone-you are putting them in danger. At least, use the speaker. You wanna kill yourself, that’s your decision. The rest of us want to live.
If you have children and feel burdened by their presence and wish they were not with you, get help, give them up for adoption, or at least try and talk to people you care about less than them during business hours or when they’re sleeping. Kids need attention, respect, to feel safe and to have an enlightened witness to see them!
Basically pay attention to where you are and the effect you may be having on other people. If it seems rude, it probably is. Just walk outside or keep your voice down. Manners are how we show each other respect!

Of course, I – like everyone else -have a phone. But I try like the dickens to be sensitive, both in regards to my phone etiquette and just in general. Lately, every Friday I try and leave my phone at home for several hours, practicing what it was like when people had to wait. I highly recommend it.

Think Your Partner is Cheating? Here’s How to Find Out…

Jim Walthby — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:39:48 +0000

Do you have a feeling in your gut that’s something wrong in your relationship? That maybe, just maybe, your partner’s being unfaithful? If you do, then you have a decision to make and several options to choose from.

The Options

First, think about how sure you are of their infidelity. If you aren’t sure at all then option one, confronting them right now, without wasting any time, is completely out of the question. Doing so could ruin the relationship because it’d highlight, rightly or wrongly, that you don’t trust your partner.

The second option: ignore your suspicions, assume they’re unfounded and that they always will be, that nothing’s going on, and continue as normal.

This option’s one many people take, either to avoid being confronted with an ugly truth, that their lover’s doing some extra ‘loving’ behind their backs, or because they fear they’re being unfair to their partners by being suspicious of them and doubtful of their devotedness.

Third option: do something to help eradicate your suspicions. Find out either way what’s going on, if your partner’s cheating on you or if they’re being faithful.

Learning the Truth

Okay, let’s assume option three is the one for you. You want to find out the truth and don’t want to simply ignore your gut instinct and continue on as normal. What methods of investigation, ways of discovering the facts, are there at your disposal?

1. The simplest way (often considered the first step), and something you might have already begun doing, is looking for obvious signs of potential betrayal. Your partner smells of a fragrance, perfume or after-shave you don’t recognize.

They’ve been leaving the house for work half an hour earlier than they’ve ever done before, for no apparent reason. They don’t seem to enjoy sex with you as they used to, or choose to avoid it completely whenever they can.

Keep an eye out for these surface signs of potential infidelity. In a way, looking for them and recording them in your mind or on paper can be considered harmless, it’s free information there to be noticed…if only you’ll look.

2. After the obvious potential signs of cheating dry up, or when you feel you’re at a dead end looking for and analyzing them, more forthright, headstrong action may be called for. Some people, at this point, reach straight for the Yellow Pages, thumbing right to the private investigator section.

That’s one option, sure, but there are things you can do yourself before calling in a third party. First, you could try setting a trap. It may sound a little primeval, like catching a wild animal, but really it’s more like a test.

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Digital Betrayal: How Cheating Husbands And Wives Use Technology To Cover Their Tracks

Jim Walthby — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:00:59 +0000

These days it’s easier than ever to communicate with people. We’ve got high-speed internet connections (wireless & otherwise), mobile phones, pagers, fax machines.

We can talk at the touch of a button, across cities, countries, the entire world. Furthermore, communication through these digital protocols is almost instant, fairly cheap and,if you want it to be,completely private and hidden.

While advancements in digital communication are, on the whole, a great thing, they do have their down sides. One disadvantage is that cheating husbands, wives (or, for that matter, girlfriends or boyfriends) can communicate with their private lovers away from the prying eyes and ears of their trusting partners.

It happens every day: thousands upon thousands of text messages are sent by disloyal men and women to those they’re sleeping with behind their real partners’ backs.

Back in the day, the only way a guy or girl could arrange a clandestine meeting would be over a hard-line (either a house phone or a pay phone). That meant the cheater would either have to make risky calls from the home of their unsuspecting spouses, or secretly take a trip to a local call box and do it from there.

Both of these methods of communication could often be spotted by the betrayed party quite easily.

But that’s now a thing of the past. It’s now a cinch for a cheater to send messages to their secret lovers from work, a locked bathroom, even from under the bed covers while their current, faithful partner sleeps quietly and 100% unaware of what’s going on just 6 inches away from them.

It’s true; things are easier for cheaters these days, but not that easy. Just as all others kinds of cheats, be it a card shark, a conman or a computer hacker, leave signs of their dishonesty behind, so do disloyal partners. And looking for the right signs, in the right places, is the absolute best way of knowing for sure if you can trust your partner.

Okay, you know now how easy it is for cheaters to communicate with their secret partners using digital communication. But what are the signs, the indications, the clues of this kind of activity? Let’s take a look:

1. Computers and Internet

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