People-watching in the digital age

Gone are the days in airports and train stations when you could while away the hours people-watching, speculating on lives and stories behind the furrowed brow, the faraway gaze, the joy, the tears, the anxiety. A marvellous kaleidoscope of the human condition. If you were lucky, you might even have found, through a chance remark, a kindred spirit to chat with or to share a comfortable silence with. If you were even luckier, an idle conversation could have led to unexpected rewards, as I discovered in Toronto waiting for my flight to London one week after 9/11. Most of those waiting to board also had had their flight changed from 9/12, so we were a somber bunch, each lost in our own thoughts and fears - none more than an elderly couple across from me, holding hands and bleak with worry. When the seat next to them became vacant, I went over to have a chat - as much to take my mind off my love/hate feelings about flying as to cheer them up - and in no time we were chatting like old friends with even a giggle from his wife. On boarding, my seat in row 27 had been changed to one UPSTAIRS!! And 3 rows away in 1st class was the British couple I'd just parted from. So it was just a serendipitous coincidence that our seats in the Holding Room were beside the British Air desk manned by some very observant agents!!

That was then. This is now. Especially in train and bus stations. No more animated faces. Heads now buried in laptops, cell phone conversations telling us more than we ever wanted to know about people's marital problems and office frustrations. Everyone dangling with wires and "i" thingies, their eyes either remote or glazed. Very effective in discouraging any kind of social interaction! And kind of sad. The electronic age has effectively scuttled one of my favourite pastimes and I miss it.