Cellphone Hermits

[Vung Tau, 2/17/26]

In 2022, I used to buy egg sandwich regularly from a man on Ba Cu Street. Since Vietnamese are more likely to ask for your age or how many kids you have than name, I never learnt his, nor he mine. Vietnamese routinely call each other brother, sister, uncle or aunt, etc. Let’s call this man Tuấn.

In 2022, I did write about Tuấn’s two sons, “One, 36-years-old, was in a traffic accident just after graduation from high school, so now is little more than a vegetable […] His 30-year-old brother, though, is just a bum. Weighting up to 275 pounds, he’s now down to a more manageable 210 […] Biggie has had just one job, as a parking attendant, but that didn’t last a month. A chain smoker if allowed, he’s only allotted six cigarettes a day. He spends all his waking hours playing computer games or watching movies and, I’m assuming, porn. Separated by a makeshift wall, his disabled brother lies in the same room, and at night, his dad shares his bed. His mom sleeps in the living room of their 230-square-foot home.”

I didn’t know about TikTok then. Since movies require an attention span, now universally shot, Biggie can’t be watching movies, but scrolling anxiously through TikTok skits, with each lasting a minute or less.