I’m in my argumentation and debate class listening to my professor explaining the meaning of a red herring.
It is then, in the middle of the explanation – which I am oddly interested in – when I hear it, above every voice, even louder than the construction outside.
The sound is so endlessly repetitive that my thoughts disappear and stay that way for four years before they are found again with a lip-piercing and an alibi.
You are probably responsible for this noise of which I speak if you are one of the brilliant minds who has the ability to text and the desire to do it in class.
In every class this semester, I’ve discovered a growing number of people who fail to fight that urge to bring out their silver RAZR phones and text at the speed of light, sound, smell and the Flash combined. Click, click, click, click, click, click.
Every time I hear the sound of fingers tapping those number keys, my ears twitch and my eyes stare into the shallow soul of the idiot to my right or left who can’t wait until the class is over to say: “Where you at?”
Where you at? You’re in class, jackass. Hang up the phone and occupy your hands with a pencil or a book.
Hell, stick a hand in the air and ask a stupid question. At least then I will be under the illusion that a new breed of human isn’t going backwards on Evolution Lane, tap-tap-tapping at a piece of plastic like the cavemen when they doodled dinosaurs. Then again, at least the cavemen grunted to one another.
I’m not whining about the cons of communication and how I feel people should see each other face-to-face to have a conversation. I am, on the other non-texting hand, taking a stand against those of you who will sit in a room of people trying to learn and take out your phone to make aneurism-inspiring clicks to send rhetorical messages to your friends.
They are probably also in class sitting next to someone who will someday lapse into homicidal mania.
Women seem to make up the majority of in-class texters. Please, “Social Susie,” please stop popping bubble gum and grinding those fake nails across that hot pink keypad.
The complexities of the bar graph can be a bit overwhelming, I know, but if Anne Frank can wait all those years for her words to be read, surely you can wait an hour before you ask “Chatty Kathy” if she prefers Aquafina to Dasani.
And before all hell breaks loose and I have a crowd of angry women after me, I’m going to say that it’s not only the females who text in class, there are also the people who are new to the texting industry.
In their inexperienced fingers, the message “Where you at?” takes two crappy presidential terms for them to type. Click. Click. Click.
Granted, core classes tend to suck and it is difficult to care about the origins of the red herring, but to text incessantly (and to sit next someone who also texts) is officially my dominant pet peeve.
No, don’t you dare think I’m demanding a boycott on cell phones in class. I’m not that passionate in my hatred of the clicking that makes nails on a chalkboard sound like a ballad, or at least not yet.
Here is my suggestion: turn your phone on vibrate and pay attention in class.
Just think of how much more intelligent you will feel when you can explain red herrings to the half of our generation who confuse “4” with for.

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