A thought occurred to me today.

While I was out walking I saw, as I so often do, somebody talking on their mobile phone and holding it in front of them horizontally. I think it might be learned behaviour from watching The Apprentice or something. Whenever I see this my inner monologue is always “look at that fucking idiot!”, though I do worry that one day my lips will move, or that I will even say it aloud.

Today was different though. After the routine, reflex, internalised idiot-shaming, I suddenly wondered: what if young people (because they are always young people. Compared to me anyway) see me holding my phone to my ear and say to themselves “what an idiot!”

Let’s be clear, I am 100% sure that I am right. As a phone has a microphone at one and and a speaker at the other it is entirely logical to put one next to the mouth and the other next to the ear, but there are lots of logical behaviours that mark you as stupid, or uneducated, or ill-mannered. For example, putting food on the back of the fork is ‘proper’ but scooping peas up on the concave side is thought to be bad table manners, even though they are less likely to fall off.

Perhaps modern etiquette means that you have to hold a phone like an idiot in order to not be thought of as an idiot?

Anyway, it is all theoretical really because I nearly always have headphones in to listen to podcasts or music when anybody calls so it would be rare for my phone to be out of my pocket.