A Tough Call: Invisible Phone Or Invisible Friend

Jim Janikowski of Motorola wears Oakley sunglasses with Bluetooth attached. (By Jim Sulley -- Associated Press)

(We do a double-take. Huh? Didn't we already say hello? Are you talkin' to me? But we play it cool and plow ahead with our next question.)

Do these two, who are wearing their identical headsets, often run into strangers who get all confused? So that even though Roane or Robinson is on the phone and talking to the headset, people think they're really talking to them ?

"Yeah," Robinson says. "People try to talk to you."

"Yeah," Roane says, nodding.

"Sometimes I might turn my head" -- Robinson says, turning so the earpiece is more visible -- "and let people know I'm not crazy."

"I'm working a double," Roane says into the air, before Robinson can finish, and though we understand this to refer to a work shift, it also seems a tidy parlance for talking out of both sides of the mouth, literally.

"We're in a new age of phone etiquette," Robinson says.

"Oh, yeah," Roane is saying, slightly off-kilter with the rest of the conversation. "We get along. We were roommates before."

At about that point, Roane's other conversation ends, whomever it was with, and he returns to us full time. But we have to admit, we're almost disappointed. Having his complete attention now seems like TV before cable, like watching early CNN before the additional news bits scrolled across the bottom-- like suddenly, this conversation has become way too simple, and something's missing.

What happens if we all decide we like our conversations kind of crazy?