I began following Kevin Williamson on Twitter today.  I didn’t know who he was before yesterday, when a friend posted this article on her Facebook page.  (He writes for the National Review, among other things, by the way.)  Williamson became my hero after doing one of those things that I’ve often dreamed of doing but never did – whether out of fear or an overdeveloped sense of propriety.  

What did he do?  Short answer is that after repeatedly asking the woman sitting next to him in a closely-packed theater space to stop using her cell phone, he took the damned thing away from her and threw it across the room.

Bravo!

How many times have any of us sat next to the yammering air head or the pompous jerk whose one-sided conversation overran the room or the bus or the train?  And how often has whatever they were droning on about of any importance at all?  And how often have we wanted to at least tell them to knock it off but didn’t because we figured the best response we would get would be a gruff “Fuck off!” or just a finger.

Granted, this woman wasn’t talking on her phone; she was Googling God knows what.  Consider that for a moment.  She paid – New York prices, no less – for a theater ticket then worked her cell phone through the performance.  Everyone in that room had forked over $75 or better to be there.  I’m going to call her “Addison” because that’s one of those names spoiled, inconsiderate women in Manhattan have.

This is the next level of cell phone invasion.  I’m sure when Addison’s talking she has no idea that her voice is an annoyance to those around her she and probably is even less aware that the bright light of her screen is a screaming disruption in a darkened theater.  After all, her answer to Williamson’s request that she stop was, “So don’t look.”

There’s a reason why before a movie starts these days, there is an announcement that texting and other use of phones during the show is unacceptable.  I love it when they get to the part where they assure us anyone who does it will be asked to leave.  It makes me a little giddy even though I’ve never seen it happen.  On the other hand, I haven’t seen the brightly-lit screen of a phone bobbing around while someone busily LOL’d or LMAO’d.  Frankly, I don’t know why theater managers don’t do it, as well.

All right, the flip side is that I don’t want to encourage people to take up arms against one another on a regular basis.  Some will say that Williamson assaulted the woman.  I would counter that taking her phone was not an assault.  Her slapping him for taking it definitely was one.  And I might add that she was completely and blatantly in the wrong from start to finish.  As the good boy, rule following type, I do get tired of people who show no respect for others and I long for them to get their comeuppance, but I don’t want every disagreement to turn into a barroom brawl.

I’d like to think that this will be a learning moment for Addison.  I’d like to think that after she cools down a bit, she’ll take an objective look at her own actions and realize that she made a mistake.  I’d like to think that she won’t have the chutzpah to press charges as she threatened.

I’d like to think all those things.  The truth is that I expect she’s a childish, self-absorbed, self-important moron who has never had a reflective moment in her life and probably never will.  Given the chance to stop and think about it, she will most likely reaffirm to herself that she was the one who was wronged by an over-sensitive jackass who couldn’t mind his own business and let her do her thing.  It’s a free country, you know.

It could be fun hear her try to justify her bad behavior in a courtroom full of people who are on Williamson’s side, though.  Good luck, Addison.