#772 Old Phony

The other day, as I was slowing to a stop at an intersection because a yellow light was about to turn, an individual swerved around me and blew through the red.
In one of those moments of startlingly detailed clarity you have when fear-induced adrenalin squirts through your system, I observed the following: The individual was talking on a cellphone. Given. The individual was not fastened in with a seatbelt. Given. The child in his extended cab truck was.
There was also a flag on the gentleman’s bumper, indicating he had honor for his country and presumably a respect for its laws.
Ah, the hypocrisies we subject our children to. And the morals we unconsciously pass along. I wonder if the gentleman tells his kid to mind him and follow the household rules.
I remember a similar small hypocrisy when I was growing up: The “I’ve arrived safely” person-to-person call.
In the old days, long distance calls were far more expensive. So people didn’t just call people long distance willy nilly. They used the operator and they specified the call be “person-to-person.”
You were only charged if that person could come to the phone. The operator was a real human being who facilitated the call and asked for the person you were supposedly calling.
My parents would sometimes take long trips to visit relatives. After they returned, they would want to call and assure those relatives they had made it home safely. So, Mom and Dad, god-fearing law-abiding citizens in daily life, would call the relative’s number and make a person-to-person call, but specify the person they were calling as either their own name or a fictitious name that indicated their deceit.
“I’d like to place a person-to-person call to Ima Homesafe.”
No such person could come to the phone, of course, so they were never charged, but the relatives would get the “home safe” message.
This crime was supposedly “okay” because it was against Ma Bell, the monopolist gouger everyone loved to hate.
Strangely, when my parents first saw me pounding a Coca Cola machine to get it to render an unpaid-for Coke, they roundly upbraided me for thievery.
I have been sensitive to hypocrisy ever since.
America, ya gotta love it.