Today's Strategies

The best way to prevent cell phone chatter from intruding upon your commute is to avoid it from happening altogether. With this in mind, I present the latest strategies for preventing chatty people from sitting next to you during your commute:

1. The Psoriaser - You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so why blow it and lose the opportunity to unleash a blizzard of dandruff on your neighbor? First, wear black clothing. Then, just as the train comes to a halt at each station, start scratching your scalp furiously. Your solitude is guaranteed.

2. The Preemptive Strike - Nobody likes a cell phone chatterbox, including cell phone chatterboxes. This only makes sense since they can't hear themselves thinking out loud when someone is doing that already. So next time you see someone boarding the train while chatting on a cell phone, quickly whip yours out and start yacking away. Chances are, they'll do their chatting elsewhere.

3. Germ Warfare - Coughing fits, wheezing, sneezing... all of these send out a signal far stronger than the ones emitted by cell phone towers.

4. The Galloping Gourmand - One of the unwritten rules of traveling on Metro North is that only certain types of food are allowed — foods under 10 decibels. The moment you start to audibly masticate on anything is the moment you irritate everyone around you. For this reason, I would only advise deploying this strategy when confronted with an actual cell phone transgression.

5. The Frottageur - Metro North isn't the subway, but that doesn't mean you can't invade other people's personal space. This is a strategy told to me by a friend who described it as a form of brinksmanship. Someone sits next to you while chatting on a cell phone and ends up physically rubbing elbows with you. It's assumed that you'll back down and shrink from being touched, but instead, you do just the opposite and just sit there, flesh against flesh. I've never tried this, but I've got to think it would be effective.

The Jerk in the Box

I am constantly thinking of products that might help fellow commuters cope with the discomfort of ambient cell phone chatter. My newest invention is a Jerk in the Box. Basically, it's a Jack in the Box. Same metal box. Same music driven by a cranking mechanism. The difference is that the harlequin who pops up is holding a tiny cell phone to his head. It's all in the application—next time you are plagued with a chatterbox on the train, you simply whip out the old "Jerk" and crank away. Everyone will have a huge laugh at the caller's expense.

Another idea was to create a telescoping wand with a tiny cell phone on the end. When someone goes overboard on the phone, you walk over and clock him or her on the head with the fully-extended wand. Again, this relies on a bit of public humiliation.

Then, of course, there's the cell phone jammer. They're illegal here in the US, but I understand people buy them overseas and point them furtively at unsuspecting talkers. Brilliant and far more effective than my ideas. But where's the public humiliation?