I'm at the library right now, and a few minutes ago, someone's phone started to ring. It was one of those really loud rings that's actually a ring, not your (current) favorite song or your friend's voice saying, "Pick up, dude, it's me! Pick up!!!" The phone kept ringing until people around me and I started looking around thinking someone must have walked away and left their phone, or else someone was too embarrassed to accept responsibility for the obnoxiousness of the situation. Finally, the guy at the table behind me starts rustling around in his coat, which is hanging on the chair next to him, and he pulls out his still-ringing phone and shuts off the ringer. Then he said, to no one in particular, "I thought the vibrate was on...guess it's not." Why did it take him so long to get to his phone? Has he blocked out the sound of his ringer? Or did he just hope it would go away? I'll admit that my phone has gone off at rather inopportune times, but I'm usually scrambling immediately to shut it off or smash it to smithereens. 
On a different but related note, at the table on the other side of me sits a guy who's reading a book. (I know, reading a book at the library?! What will people think up next?) 15 minutes or so ago, another guy came up and sat at the other side of Guy 1's table and began reading a book, as well. Guy 2, however, has ear buds in and is listening to music so loudly that I can hear it from where I'm sitting, a good 15 feet away. I feel bad for Guy 2's eardrums, and bad for Guy 1's concentration. Then that cell phone went off...it's not Guy 1's day.
I've become aware lately of how unaware people (and I include myself in this) are of what is acceptable and what's not. For example, playing the cello in your apartment at 3 in the afternoon: pleasant! Playing hard rock in your apartment as loud as you can at 3 in the morning: obnoxious. (Playing the cello in your apartment at 3 in the morning would also be obnoxious, but it hasn't happened yet.) Reading a book in the library: acceptable (expected...). Playing tag in the library (this happened while I was here the other day when a high school group came in): not cool. Sometimes I want to ask the people having a party in the apartment above me at 1 in the morning on a Thursday night, or the guy sitting near me singing along with his headphones, or the person coughing on my neck in line behind me if they were raised in a barn. But I don't, because I don't think that's acceptable, and I am trying to be more aware of that. In the mean time, I'm practicing up on my evil eye and dirty glare. THOSE, I believe, are still quite acceptable.
