The Crime of Multitasking

Yesterday, while watching Simone Bolelli beat Florent Serra on court 3 at the Sony-Ericsson, I was pulled out of my seat by a  Miami-Dade County policeman and a tournament official. As the Italian women I was sitting next to later told me, they said to each other, "This doesn't look good at all".

Mystified by the whole thing, I asked if I could bring my backpack, and was told I could. I looked back longingly at my favorite seat on court 3, which I had camped on to watch the two upcoming matches. I knew they both were going to be popular, and court 3 is small.

I couldn't imagine why the police would be interested in me, and it didn't seem to be anything random, like a drunk-driver traffic checkpoint. They clearly were interested in me in particular. When I got outside, the tournament official told me that, as a courtesy, he wanted me to know that gambling on these tennis matches was illegal, they've had a big problem, and they felt that I might have been doing so. I was outraged.

"Why me?"
"Well, you've been using your smartphone an awful lot."
"What!!!! I have the ATP app on my phone, and I'm following all the other matches, sending email to my wife, and doing all the other things I do on my phone. This is outrageous!"
"Yes, we figured it was something like that, but as a courtesy we just wanted you to know that gambling at these matches is illegal."

They had pulled me out between games, not during a changeover, and by now the next game had started. I didn't want to miss more of it, and the official escorted me back to my seat--which isn't supposed to happen during a game. During the changeover I told those sitting around me what had happened (naturally, they wondered).

For the rest of the day I observed other people with their smartphones, and I think I figured out what set this off. All the other people use their phones as follows: They press a button. They press another button. They stare at the screen. They press another button. They stare at the screen. This all takes something like 3 minutes. Then they might look up for a moment before pressing another button and staring at the screen. And so on. In short, they are either using their smartphones or watching tennis.

That's not exactly how I use my Droid. When a match is slow, as this one was (these two players are from Bordeaux and Bologna, y'know?), I get a lot of stuff done between points. But I don't miss a single point. In fact, I really don't miss what goes on between points. I just do both at once. This ability has had both good and bad effects on my life, but when it comes to multitasking, I was "born to the work".

So there I was, sitting in a seat that is perched literally 4 feet above the head of one of the players during changeovers, watching the supplements he is taking, and getting the best possible view of the match. I'm visibly noticing everything around me, furiously pressing buttons and looking back and forth. "As I always do," as my friend Denis said to me when he arrived before the next match.

So, another victim of the muggles' war on the unusual, if only a very minor victim. I was reminded of the poor girl from MIT, who arrived at Logan with a piece of electronics pinned to her sweater, as jewelry. Fortunately, being suspected of gambling isn't like being suspected of terrorism at an airport (it shut the place down in her case). People around me couldn't resist the opportunity to poke me. The ATP guy who was grading the skills of the linespeople on his little chart said bye to us all when he left, and then whispered to me, "and try to do something about that gambling problem". Two guys who had been sitting a few seats away left and said to me, "stay out of trouble, man".

But more seriously, I have become acquainted with a linesperson, who I met last year when we kept walking from the parking lot at the same time. He is a main linesman, did the finals at Indian Wells last week, and is obviously highly respected on the court, even by the chair umpires. He saw me sitting in my lot 3 perch after he was on the court for the last game there, and came over to say hi and tell me about his redeye and the travails of back-to-back tournaments. After we chatted I couldn't help but think, "Did ATP officials see him chatting with a 'suspected gambler'? Maybe that wouldn't be so good for him." Great, huh?

I realize that this is extremely minor compared to all the troubles in the world, even troubles of this nature, but I felt pretty police-stated.