Quality Time
It’s a warm day on the Highveld of the holy land. This little corner of the burbs has some actual street life left. There are residential blocks right up against the ground floor shop fronts. Everything from booksellers, cafes on the corners, a butcher through to a small haberdashery shop tucked in between the hardware shop and the plant nursery.
A trio of tourists are seated at the table on the sidewalk just to the left of the entrance to the cafe serving its regional North American speciality. The handful of the well-spaced tables inside are empty. I choose a back corner, near the all critical plug point so I can keep pace with the demands of getting this bread and securing the bag and whatever current meme stands in for working.
I settle in and get on with opening the relevant tabs; more tabs than usual because some senior tech body cannot tell me how to load the proprietary email for the current gig on a regular Gmail account. He’s never had such a request before he says and he will have to find out how to do it. It’s been too many working days so far and the tech human is clearly having a hard time of this actual work that he’s now suddenly faced with. So much easier to cut and paste the standard script some human wrote ten years ago; click send and go back to the real reason tech human rocks up at the office; to run his side hustle business on company resources.
Soon the trio of tourists finish up and without so much as a wave, thank you or anything else moderately human, get up and walk away. North Americans truly are a special breed. There’s a lull at the cafe and the solo front of house human visibly relaxes. I get on with the admin of dealing with my too many open tabs just to attend to simple tasks and get lost in the work at hand. The slightly too loud blues playing in the background feels at odds with the bright sunshine streaming down outside but the fact that I have to switch between two tabs; one to read and one reply to emails is enough over-stimulation for my brain for me to not to be too focussed on the background music.
My reverie is broken by a loud male voice with that characteristic drawl that comes from being born and raised in the land of the free (market) and home of the brave (military). The large rotund form is followed by a pair of tweenies and they proceed to engage the solo front of house human on their order. Having bought up the entire day’s stock of sweet treats (okay that’s probably an exaggeration although the adult male looks like he’s eaten more than his fair share of key lime pie in his life already), they settle at a window table near the front of the shop.
Street life streams past them.
Ten seconds after being seated, the adult and the tweenies have their devices in their hands. They’re likely regulars here because they didn’t need to ask for the password for the free (and thankfully good) WiFi. Despite serving a type of North American speciality cuisine, the cafe is not a fast food place and in the well over five minutes while this trio waits for their drinks, their heads are buried in their devices.
They don’t exchange a single word with each other.
The front of house human arrives with the large steaming cups and not one of the trio lifts their heads from their devices. A minute or two later the serving human arrives with the side plates of pie and cake and the trio lift their eyes long enough to scan their orders. They set their phones down and proceed to attack the food prepared for them while regularly returning their gazes to their devices. Every now and then, they stop eating, lay down the cutlery and give both hands to their devices. Before going back to shovelling the food in front of them into their maws.
There is no conversation between the adult male nor even between the tweenies themselves. Each is fully immersed in shovelling the food prepared for them into their mouths and keeping their eyes glued to their devices. It’s about twenty minutes since they sat down at the table and they have now demolished the meal in front of them. There is a brief exchange between the tweenies as they grab at bits on each other’s plates.
The adult is still buried in his device.
It takes me a moment to realise this is what quality time with the kids, circa February 2023 looks like.
Quality Time is an observation of real life.
Jesh Baker © for OppiStoep, 2023, All Rights Reserved
