Happy 30th to the Walkman, which started the revolution that meant we would never again "have to endure the tedium of doing only one thing at once." And our great disengagement was soon to follow:
The Walkman also served as an extremely effective "Do Not Disturb" sign. Take a book on the subway to discourage interaction with fellow travelers, and you were likely to inspire inquiries about the book. Take a Walkman, and you were suddenly as inaccessible as a lone car commuter protected by the glass and steel of his GM sedan. As effective as the Walkman was in pushing us toward Rocky-like moments of transcendence on the treadmill, its most unique attribute was its ability to enhance life's lesser moments.
In grocery store lines, school cafeterias, airport lounge holding pens, boring college lectures, and every other public or semi-public place where blabbermouths with boundary issues once wielded absolute license to accost you, a new sense of privacy came into existence The Walkman was so good at enveloping its users in a no-fly zone of self-containment it even made private life more private. It didn't matter if you were at the dinner table, in the family room, in the marital bed—with a pair of Walkman headphones clamped to your head, you were clearly otherwise engaged.
I have a confession that might shock some of my friends. There were times when you respected my privacy, refraining from talking to me while I listened to music on my headphones. Well, guess what? I didn't really have a Walkman -- just the headphones. It created the same "leave me alone" space just for a few dollars. Know what else? Holding a cell phone to your ear and saying "uh, huh" a few times works the same way.
Comments
I've found that a pissed off glare is pretty much just as effective.
Takes more energy, though.
Oh, some days, it comes pretty effortlessly.