Anyone who doubts that cellphones cause brain damage should study the behavior of cellphone users. Consider:

1. This past Saturday, I was driving in the middle of three lanes on Interstate 35W. I came upon a slow-moving vehicle. I waited for vehicles in the fast lane to clear and went past. As I did so, I saw that the driver was talking on a cellphone. She was oblivious to what was happening around her. After I passed, I moved back into the middle lane. I could see in my rearview mirror that many other cars had to make the same maneuver. It was like water flowing past a rock in a river. This woman, for the sake of her own convenience (she didn’t want to have to accommodate vehicles entering the highway), inconvenienced dozens of others. Actually, it’s worse than that. She endangered dozens of others.

2. A few minutes ago, as I was watching the baseball game between my adoptive Texas Rangers and the Seattle Mariners, I saw a fat man standing in the stands behind the hitter. He was waving frantically with a stupid smile on his face. He had a cellphone pressed to his ear with his other hand. Someone explain this to me. Almost certainly, the person to whom he was speaking has seen him before, so he wasn’t saying, “Here’s what I look like.” Unless he was proving to the person to whom he was speaking that he was, indeed, at the ballpark (and how likely is that?), what was the point of this? Waving to the camera while talking on a cellphone was cute for about five minutes. It hasn’t been cute since.

3. On my walks with Shelbie, I see people standing in their driveways or front yards talking on their cellphones. Get in the house, you morons!

4. At bike rallies, as I prepare my bike, I hear people talking to their friends. “Where you at?” Pause. “I’m parked behind the building.” Pause. “I’ve already been to registration.” Pause. “See ya.” This sort of thing was fun when I was eight and had a walkie-talkie. It’s idiotic when adults do it.

5. I hear people talking on their cellphones in the grocery store and other public places. Their voices are much louder than they would be if their interlocutors were standing beside them. Do they not realize this? Do they not care?

Brain damage, I tell you.