It didn't take long. Just a couple of days riding the Hogtown transit to remind this sometime country girl of the troubles of the world. With my face pressed up against the door of the subway, I caught that sound I've been hearing since about 1980...tinny headphones. I looked around and just about everyone -- business men included -- were wearing some kind of white/black buds in their ears.

There's nothing new in this. Back when Sony Walkmans were the iPods of the day, I fretted that a generation was going to be deaf. And back when I was wearing a clunky cassette Walkman myself, I was living in Ottawa, a place where you needed to be bilingual to survive or get a job.

What does this have to do with anything?

Here's the thing. Don't learn French. Don't learn Arabic. Don't learn Cantonese. Don't learn Japanese. Learn sign language. No one's gonna be able to hear what you're saying in any language. So the language of the future is sign language. D'ya hear me?

But here's the rub...the same demographic of folks who are layering scar tissue in their ears are also crippling their hands by texting, using their Blackberry, playing online games. They won't freakin' be able to sign!

So what we have in my first month back in the big city (just visiting) is a conundrum, a dilemma. We're doomed as doomed can be. It won't be the ice age that kills us. or cigarettes. It will be losing our senses and our ability to communicate that will do us in.

Well, maybe not do us in, but sheesh it's gonna be crazy, eh?

Thanks and good luck.