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and a notebook on it. She is listening to an iPod
through headphones. She looks at the book and
then writes in the notebook, “50 cl = 500 ml, 30
cl = 300 ml”. I look away, trying not to be too
obvious that I am watching what she is doing. It
wouldn’t be polite. She picks up her cell phone
that is lying in her lap, and presses a few buttons.
A few seconds later she looks at her telephone
and writes some more in her notebook. All of a
sudden it dawns on me that she is not alone. She
is doing her homework with someone else whom I
can’t see. We are on a train, but we could just as
well be sitting by a kitchen table.
On my commute over the years I have probably
watched hundreds of people send SMS messages,
and always wondered what they were discussing,
and with whom. Planning the evening’s activities?
Receiving a grocery list? Announcing an arrival
time? This, however, was the first time I had ever
partaken of another person’s SMS correspondence,
and understood it’s content. I was surprised
by my own response. I felt slightly uneasy and
dirty. Like a voyeur. Like someone who had secretly
opened someone else’s mail. All of this reminded
me of how I felt a few years earlier when
I began overhearing other people’s private cell
phone conversations. In those days I tried not to
hear. I even turned my head away from the spea-