It’s All About ‘Buenos Dias’

 I looked up from the screen of my cell phone and saw a tall, slender woman with a plate of tacos at the end of my table. 

All the chairs at the table had been moved to other tables at the market. I suspected she was my elder, so I said “Good morning,” and offered her my seat. She declined. In a few moments, a teenaged boy gave up his chair and brought it to her. 

Kathy G. had a mop of tousled white hair and sky blue eyes. She wore a store-bought type peasant blouse and un-bleached cotton slacks over hiking sandals. She came to the organic market this Saturday in San Miguel de Allende to buy a few days’ worth of tacos to eat in the week ahead. “I’m 80 and I don’t cook anymore. I raised two sons!“ The long line of customers at the taco stand, most of them US ex-pats, Canadians and Europeans, meant the tacos there were really popular.

Kathy said that after 16 years of living in Mexico, most of them with her husband, who died two years ago, she was preparing to return to the States. 

As we spoke, I held my cellphone in case Susie texted me from her walk to the art institute nearby.  Kathy pointed at my cell phone. That was the reason she was leaving Mexico. “My cellphone?” I asked .

She nodded and explained people in San Miguel had changed when cell phone use spread like wildfire two years ago. Did she mean how people  in Ireland surprised us 20 years ago when they walked down the street, their arms cocked to their ears, speaking in their outside voices to seemingly no one?

Worse than that. Kathy continued, “Now everyone in San Miguel has one. They all stopped talking to each other. Now they look at their phones all day instead of talking to people. They even do it when they drive.”

Putting the cell phone genie back into its bottle seems unlikely, especially as this genie makes mucho money for its masters by keeping our eyes glued to the next Tik Tok video of a cat or someone who identifies as one.  Resistance to the addictive lure of screens and the next thing to not be missed can seem futile, but I’ll never believe it’s too late.  I’m a teacher, that’s my job.

Years ago, I saw the arrival of the cell phone transform the culture at my college as fast as the arrival of a tiger scatters people off the dance floor.  On my way to class my footsteps echoed in the crowded but hushed hall. Students stood lined up against walls, silent as monks on a retreat, their necks craned forward the better to scan their screens. I missed the usual raucous sounds of chatter and laughter. The pairs and groups of students who talked, shared notes, made friends and flirted as they waited for class to start. Here is where students got to know their classmates and sometimes shared notes, assignments, formed study groups and test -drove ideas about what they learned in our Communication class. 

Now my heels click-clicked noisily past solitary students who wouldn’t notice if someone walked by in their birthday suit. No conversations, be they casual or intentional.  No new friends, no flirting. The corridor felt antiseptic and vaguely sad, like a hospital. 

The cellphone in hand signaled I-am-not-open-to-conversations.   No wonder loneliness is an increasing problem for young people in college today. 

As I walked unnoticed and unacknowledged, I felt my own enthusiasm ebb. Would I be able persuade these students from behind their shields to the necessary task of dropping their guard to play, to risk and to try on new ideas in my class? 

As the use of social media and screen time among us grew, the urgency of teaching media literacy also grew with each new semester. 

Here in Mexico, Kathy was crunched by what cell phones took from the culture. She missed the thing she loved the most about living so long in Mexico, the warmth of its people. To anyone new to Mexico, she offered this advice, which proved she still had hope. “With Mexicans, it’s all about the phrase,  ‘buenos dias,’ ‘good morning.’

Even after the the cell phone body snatchers invaded San Miguel, Kathy believed the local charm is still alive. If you offer anyone in San Miguel a simple ‘buenos dias,’ they will still open up like morning glories in the sun. “It’s all about ‘buenos dias,’ ‘good morning.’