Schizophonia

No, this isn't another cell phone rant . . . at least not a typical one. There used to be this one guy in our neighborhood years ago who would walk down the street talking to the air, sometimes shouting at it. Other times he would just be standing on the street corner having a conversation (or sometimes an argument) with nobody in particular that you could ever see. Schizophrenia may look like a Monty Pythonesque disease, but it's hell for those who have it.

But how could we ever diagnose this disease today? I'm constantly running into people who are talking to the air. I ran into one of those people yesterday. It was some lady holding a conversation with no one that I could see. There was no cell phone in her hand. There wasn't even one of those itty bitty Lieutenant Uhura-like miniature ear bugs in her ear. She may have had a lapel mike. I don't know. For all I know, she may have been crazy. All I could see and hear was this woman talking to the air. I quipped to my brother, who was standing there with me, that there is no sure way to tell whether she is conducting business or is an all-out schizophrenic.

What a boon the cell phone must be for the self-esteem and acceptance of true schizophrenics. We are now quite used to people talking to the air and holding conversations with people we cannot see. And most of us by now, if we haven't exactly gotten used to it, know well enough to leave these types of out-of-body cell phone talkers alone. We have all probably been fooled more than once by trying to answer them when they were talking to someone else, not us. That's happened several times to me in a grocery store check-out line where it is quite common to strike up a casual conversation while waiting. But I'm much more careful these days.

The cell phone may put us in touch with people who are remote, but it ironically puts more distance between us and the people who are standing just feet away. These out-of-body cell phone conversations have always impressed me as a bit of a ghostly affair. Oh, I do understand the concept of electromagnetic waves and microwave repeaters. There really is (likely) someone on the other end of that call. But I sometimes wonder whether that "someone else" the cell phone talker is allegedly talking to is real or just a vision inside their own heads. Haven't we all had the sneaking suspicious from time to time that some of these cell phone users are talking to no one in particular and are just doing it for show? Can they *really* not choose between which kind of lettuce to buy in the produce section without phoning a friend? Hmmm.

For the schizophrenic or the cell phone user, whether that "someone else" is a real person or just a vision inside their own heads is ultimately a metaphysical question. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Such considerations are harmless enough, but one wonders, now that disembodied cell phone conversations in public are so ubiquitous, how many schizophrenics go untreated? And, perhaps more to the point, how many of these oddball public cell phone users need treatment themselves? It often strikes me as odd that many just can't exist *unless* they hear a constant stream of voices, no matter the source.