WRONG NUMBER

"Uh, is [inaudible] there?" the voice on the other end of the telephone asked. "Who?" I inquired. Insert more garbled audio here. "What number are you calling?" I asked politely.
"Oh S@#t!" screamed the caller before hanging up.
Lucky me, I was the recipient, not once, but twice more after that awkward and impolite attempt to connect with someone else through my number. Had he called again, I was tempted to remind him of the right way to end a wrong call.
We've all done it. A harmless mistake, that can be easily rectified by saying something along the lines of "I'm sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number."
Punctuating the mistake with expletives is truly bad form. Simply hanging up is even ruder.
The next time you call someone by mistake, keep it short, polite, and clean. If you are on the other end of the line, same goes. "I'm sorry, I think you must have the wrong number" is all that needs to be said. To be sure, these types of calls can be annoying, but they needn't be occasions for rudeness and impoliteness. Remember, IT 'MANNERS' A LOT!

Disconnet and RE-ENGAGE

Just like that, in the blink of a blood-shot eye, the Christmas holiday has come and gone. In its wake, are more plugged-in and rewired kids (and adults) than ever before. Like the wall of tv monitors at Best Buy, everywhere you look it seems the alien nation of heads drooped down toward their iPads and new cell phones has them connected to Mars, but completely detached from real time contact.
When did we become a divided society of those connected, and everyone else disconnected from human contact and conversation? It is tempting to walk over to the next table in the restaurant and slap the sense back into the parents of the youngster drunk in a digital gaze at the 4x6 piece of plastic between their palms. But the adults are just as oblivious to this lapse in social interraction. Their little droids will only set their mesmerizing hand magnets aside long enough to inhale their meal.
Wait, what was I thinking? Slapping MYSELF back to my senses.
It is absolutely exhasperating though to witness a group of friends ignoring one another to pay attention to an inanimate object, or a family out to an expensive dinner with only half the table looking at each other face to face.
Last time I checked, playmates sat on the sidewalk and talked to each other, like Beaver Cleaver and Opie Taylor, not communicating by thumbs to a new virtual friend in the outer bands of Saturn with a machine smaller than a pop tart. Parents, wake up! Insist your children put down their electronic device with which they are fused to the hip. Politely ask, then demand that they power it off and instead - engage with you at the dinner table, in the car, and most especially in a place of worship.
To let them do otherwise is inconsiderate of you and your time together. The same goes for those on dates. If 'Mr. Right' can't put any distance between the menu and his Blackberry, he is most definitely 'Mr. Probably Not'.
Disconnect and Re-engage, because it DOES 'Manner' A lot!