Cell Phone Etiquette

Yesterday I had the privilege of chaperoning 100 some-odd students to Ashland to see Macbeth. In all, it was a great trip; no one snuck alcohol on the bus and got trashed, nothing promiscuous happened in Lithia Park, and no one was left behind. Mission accomplished. 

The play was good, not great; but what can you expect for a matinée' given to a bunch of high schoolers. I am sure the energy on stage was low, as it would be hard to keep up intensity when your audience is laughing and whispering at inappropriate times (uncultured swine!). Lady Macbeth was stellar, Macbeth himself was close to being less than satisfactory. He was floppy on stage and delivered his lines in an odd syncopated rhythm that became increasingly distracting. He also failed, I felt, to capture Macbeth's disheveled, wild and psychotic state at the end of the play--his inward turmoil was unsuccessfully manifested in an outward fashion. However, other elements of the play were fantastic, the cyclical nature of power and war was one such theme that was expertly addressed via the set design, which was built on a mangle of bronzed corpses symbolizing how Scotland had been erected through bloodshed. 

But what of the cell phones mentioned in my title? Well, one went off during one of Macbeth's famous monologues. It rang and rang and rang, broadcasting a grating melody throughout the theater. I cursed under my breath and a spectacular vision took shape in my mind. Macbeth, without breaking character, leapt of the stage with sward in hand--chucking bodies out of the way as he searched for the incessant ringing. The culprit was quickly located, and with booming voice and bulging biceps Macbeth picked the audience member up by the throat and verbally ripped him to shreds in perfect iambic-pentameter. The crazed Macbeth then took the phone, and with a ferocious jolt violently fed the device to the perpetrator. As the criminal attempted banal cries of apology he choked to death. I laughed with glee and the audience applauded. Macbeth, not yet satiated, decapitated the wrongdoer and thrust the bloody head onto the point of his sward resulting in a standing ovation. The head (cellphone still lodged in mouth) was then mounted outside the theater as an example to those who time and time again fail to understand the words "Please be polite and turn off your cell phones."  

We are more than a decade into cellphonedom, it is time a no tolerance approach be taken.