Alert!

Kim and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate Valentines Day, since celebrating on a Monday didn’t really seem like anything we wanted to do. The Movable Feast Tradition simplifies life a great deal that way. It was a good meal and a lovely time, and a nice, quiet way to celebrate the holiday.

With omicron caseloads dropping and vaccine rates being respectable around here, we thought we’d take the chance eating in the main dining room of this place, and it was fairly crowded with people who agreed with us. There were all sorts of people there, happily enjoying their dinners.

There was one part of it that wasn’t quiet, though.

To understand this, you need to know two things.

First, the evening was cold but clear when we drove out there, but the Weather Folks were warning us of “snow squalls” that might complicate things as time went by.

From this I have learned, by the way, that nobody in Wisconsin has any idea what a “squall” is. My social media feeds this morning were filled with plaintive cries and odd little memes all on the general theme of having to look up this mysterious and unknown word and seriously, where have these people been hiding all their lives? Is this just something that doesn’t happen in the midwest? I remember this as a fairly common meteorological term growing up in the mid-Atlantic, but maybe it’s new here.

It must be new here, because the Weather Folks certainly reacted to the possibility of this happening with all of the grace and restraint of a housecat confronted by a cucumber.

Second, we live in an age of immediate connectivity. Everyone carries a cell phone. Small children carry cell phones. Great-grandparents carry cell phones. The only people who don’t have cell phones on them are the sorts of people who go out of their way to tell you they don’t have cell phones on them. They probably brew their own IPAs.

One of the more interesting things that has happened with cell phones recently is that they have become emergency beacons. Not only do people use them to take photos or surf the web or text (nobody actually uses them as telephones – don’t be silly), but also they are now set up to emit ear-splitting blasts of noise every time some Vague Government Agency decides there is an emergency you need an Alert for. Missing persons! Tornadoes! 50% Off At Walmart! Whatever.

This includes snow squalls now.

So there we are, peaceably enjoying our meal among the other diners, when suddenly there is this cascading din of Alerts that ripples through the room as first one cell phone then the next is alerted to the fact that it might actually be snowing outside. In Wisconsin! In February! I KNOW!

Eventually everyone in the room had to pull out their phones and do whatever it is one does to make the alert stop blaring – it varies by phone, I suppose – and for an odd little moment we all kind of stared at each other in shared bewilderment. It was kind of a bonding moment, really.

And then we went back to eating.

There were some big snow squalls, in fact, and driving home through them was Not Fun At All, so perhaps the alerts weren’t so odd.

But that moment certainly was.