Conversational Decay

Conversational Decay - Sorry for the week -long delay and welcome back everyone! - Last Monday as I was sitting in the Airport Newark, NJ and waiting for my outbound flight to Europe, I seriously could not help but shake my head. What the heck had just happened, I just could not stop wondering? After having landed and having been taxied to our designated spot, we were swiftly rounded up and bussed to Terminal C. Suddenly rather literally stranded on the tarmac after an abrupt and more or less unannounced midway discharge and with the prospect of an alleged transfer to Terminal B, the five remaining passengers including myself were now exchanging puzzled looks. Not until someone had pointed out that his flight was about to board within the next ten minutes, the busdriver sighed and more than reluctantly spoke into his walkie- talkie. Only then, he finally proved willing and ready to set his bus in motion again. Alright, we were eventually all dropped off at Terminal B, Gates 40- 47. What in the world, I thought to myself and began to roam around until I spotted a seemingly helpful face behind one of the counters. So I walked up to that black girl and inquired about Gate 60. Well, she was anything but talkative, much less friendly or God forbid conclusive. From that chump change of mumble jumble which she hurriedly addressed me with, I inferred that I needed to leave the Terminal again and basically return to where I had just come from, get back on the same bus and well, move on to Terminal B. Excuse me, say what? I instantly felt the onset of a severe tension headache creep up from my neck as I was dumbfoundedly staring at that sign "Shuttle Service Terminal A & C" and referring to exactly that discrepancy. Thereupon that airport staffer merely chuckled and brushed it off with a mild shoulder shrug. Then after a ten- second delay, she came forward with a suggestion which I only grasped marginally at best. "Could you please slow down a tad, so I understand you better", I now apologetically responded in order to resume or rather revive our little small talk. She, however, gave me the stink eye, shook her head and even flailed her arms around in absolute refusal to grant me just that privilege. I am not racist, but all of a sudden, I grew pretty nervous as I became aware that I was momentarily the absolute minority onsite and with that at the utter mercy of those women present as far as receiving any further information. Thank God, one of her colleagues quite evidently felt sorry for me and opened her mouth after all. Lucky me, since she talked to me in full sentences rather than just hurling incoherent word clusters at me like the other girl, no problem, I perfectly knew how to proceed from there on. - Why is it that of all places, the personnel of an airport cannot or will not, or rather chooses not to communicate with passengers to perhaps facilitate matters just a little at least? Conversation is fundamentally all there is for the main purpose of thriving human interaction per se. It very much appears to me, though that exactly that highly significant tool - language itself - is rapidly decaying these days. What a shame, we tend to shorten more and more words to just stupid acronyms, symbols or even "devocalized" stumps, sentences to an absolute minimum, neglect grammar, spelling and semantics to an extent that it just brutally hurts and lastly swallow what is left so it becomes sense- less, awkward, misleading and ultimately unintelligible. Where is this horrific decay leading us with no more (physical) books being read, no more cursive writing taught in schools and on top less and less stress put on reading and comprehension skills? I honestly fear that we as a society are on our way of gradually de- evolving and thus returning to an increasingly non- verbal form of communication. What a nightmare this is!