My sweet husband bought me a Bluetooth headset yesterday. I hope to return it to the store tomorrow, as I am relieved I did not throw it out the car window today.
HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME???
It’s not that I don’t appreciate advances in communication, or that I wasn’t moved by his heartfelt longing to save his fellow motorists from the physical trauma and extensive body work derived from my swerving attempts to talk on my cell phone while shifting the MINI into third. Brings a whole nother dimension to its nickname: The Menacing MINI.
ARE YOU THERE? I CAN’T HEAR YOU? IS THIS THING ON? HELLO?
Know this, fellow Luddites: Had my husband not given me this Bluetooth as a gift, I would have placed it beneath my 18-inch sub-dubs and backed up… and then rolled forward… and then backed up… and then rolled forward… and then scooped up what was left of the damned thing and deposited it at the base of Coolidge’s favorite tree to await a yellow christening by the smartest dog in the universe.
I don’t hate the Bluetooth because I hate technology. Rather, I hate technology that is supposed to make my life simpler but instead makes me feel like a dumbass. The gloves come off here… Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Dah dah dah dah – DUH NUH – DUH NUH NUH!
It is the triumphant sound of Monday Night Football – the Pat Bertinelli ringtone! Hooray! I rifle through the passenger seat detritus in search of the silver Bluetooth headset – it’s the size of a dollar bill folded into fourths. Its white light blinks insistent beside my cell phone. I flip open the phone – it keeps ringing. The Bluetooth keeps blinking.
Dah dah dah dah – DUH NUH – DUH NUH NUH. SHIT.
I pick up the Bluetooth, screw the wirehook around my ear, untangle my hair from said hook, throw my sunglasses on the floorboard, steer away from the on-coming traffic, try to bend the hook away from where it’s poking my ear lobe, overcorrect into my neighbor’s lane, jam the ear bud into my external auditory canal, shift to fourth, make sure the rectangular “toothy” part of the Bluetooth is touching my jaw, depress its little on-button bubble … and nothing happens.
Duh na – na na na! The violins are coming in now.
I mash the button again and again, flip open and closed my stupid cellphone shouting, “HELLO? PAT? PAT! CAN YOU HEAR ME!” Silence. The violins fade away. Repeat 12 times. I called the office and hung up on them twice before I shifted into sixth. How’s this for “hands free;” I’m driving down Scottsdale Road this morning, pounding my Bluetooth ear with my right hand and trying to answer my cellphone with my left. And this is safe in what country?
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? WAS I YELLING? THERE’S AN ECHO – TURN DOWN YOUR RADIO. MY RADIO? HELLO? HELLO? ARE YOU THERE?
STUPID BLUETOOTH: I suspect it uses my dental work to channel radio frequencies into my skull. Because how the hell can you talk into something that doesn’t have a microphone next to your mouth. Do not mock me, friends, you know that Bluetooth Decay is undermining polite society as we know it. The technology transforms its users into those slicked-back-hair / no-socks-wearing / smell-em-a-mile-away-cologne-abusing / self-important assholes who think EVERYONE IS INTERESTED in their stupid conversation and proceed to cell-yell it to the unsuspecting universe. You know them by the jut of metal implanted in their ears and the bark of their insistent voices – and when they are polluting your auditory atmosphere with their Bluetooth Bloviation, you want to join me in screaming: HEY MORON: PULL THAT PIECE OF CRAP OUT OF YOUR EAR AND GET A FREAKIN’ LIFE! I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR KILLER STOCK TRADES OR YOUR TROUBLESOME COLONOSCOPY OR THE GIRL WHO BLEW YOU OFF LAST NIGHT – CATCH A CLUE, FOOL, SHE BLEW YOU OFF BECAUSE YOU WOULDN’T EXTRACT THE STUPID BLUETOOTH WHEN YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE A MOVE ON HER.
Don’t even get me started on cellphone users who call you back when you didn’t leave a message. That’s a story for another time, but it was spawned from the same cavity as Bluetooth Decay.
Much as Pat has patiently tried to instruct me on the elegant function of the Bluetooth, I don’t get it – and it’s not like I’m an idiot: I have solved differential equations before – I didn’t enjoy them, but I could do them. And here I am on the verge of breakdown – or at least a single-car rollover accident – because “advanced” technology that is supposed to make my life simpler and instead makes me feel like I have vienna sausages for thumbs and creamed corn for brains.
And so, just as I heap more scorn upon this tiny techonological tincture to my telephonic teleology, an even more elegant solution presents itself: Instead of trying to figure out the Bluetooth, I could just shut up and drive.