“Look up!” called my partner. I whipped my head around, but he wasn’t speaking to me. He was speaking to the young woman about to collide with us on the footpath. She looked up from her phone, jolted back into her surroundings, and altered course.

I laughed. “You’re a grumpy old man.”

My partner shook his head. “You watch. She’ll walk into a pole.”

The traffic never ceases on our phones, but nor does it on the roads.Credit: Getty Images

I turned around and saw her, head back down in her phone, about to cross a road. It might be worse than a pole, I thought.

We went into a mini-mart, and I stood by the register as my partner paid for our drinks. As I waited, my hand moved automatically to my phone. I checked my emails and text messages, and without any conscious thought, landed on WhatsApp.

My daughter had sent me a meme about a certain ex-POTUS, and it was hilarious, or a little offensive, depending on your political leanings. I thought it was the former. I grabbed my partner’s arm and thrust my phone under his face, without taking my eyes off the screen.

“Ha!” I said. “It’s brilliant!”

He didn’t respond and I looked up at him. A man I’d never seen before in my life looked back at........

© The Age