Two Screen Couples

This past weekend I volunteered at a charity event for a friend of mine, who is the Director of Development at a school for children with learning disabilities. We were working the Auction Checkout Room, which meant we pretty much did nothing until the end of the night when people were ready to leave, and then we had to get our shit together in a hurry. Once we realized that we really had nothing to do for a couple of hours, most of us decided to peruse the expensive auction items and grab a drink or two from the open bar.

An extremely prepared husband and wife team, however, had different plans. As soon as the downtime was announced, the guy turned to all of us and said, "Wanna watch a DVD? I got Ratatouille!" He was greeted with pretty much universal polite nodding. Assuming he just had a laptop, I was shocked to see him pull out an entire mini-entertainment system from his bag. It had a DVD player, mini speakers, and TWO SCREENS! From that point on, he and his wife watched Ratatouille right next to each other on separate screens. It was very bizarre. It was as if they were both in entirely different worlds - there was no side conversation, no shared laughter, nothing. The screens had taken them to their own personal theaters, and watching Ratatouille seemed more of an assignment they had to complete than anything else. While I understand that just one of those small screens wouldn't be ideal to share, there is something off-putting about two people sitting next to each other almost pretending that they're not. Other than the fact that the husband carries this with him, ready to bust out at any sign of an entertainment lapse, it was the separation between the couple that disturbed me the most. Even though they were watching the same thing, it really felt like they weren't at all.

BaeRating: C-