HEY. WHAT’S GOING ON? HEADING OVER TO GERALDINE’S LATER? YEAH. SHE REALLY IS. WHAT’S THAT? YEAH, I GOT THE OINTMENT. COMES WITH A LITTLE COMB. WE SHOULD BE ALL SET. YOU WATCH THE PAT’S LAST NIGHT? ATROCIOUS. WHAT’S THAT? YEAH. IT STILL BURNS A LITTLE.

Pardon me. I didn’t mean to subject you to a private conversation in which you have absolutely no interest. Only a cad would insinuate the mundane vagaries of his private life upon a complete stranger.

I’m not a cad. I’m only trying to make a point after a half-dozen or so store clerks grabbed me, shook me and insisted I write about this new form of rudeness.

It’s the cell-phone people and you already know who I’m talking about. They walk through the stores having loud conversations and ignoring the immediate world around them. These people laugh a lot and talk with animation because they want you, the annoyed bystander, to see how popular and important they are.

A very urgent note to public cell-phone yappers: People hate you. This is not my opinion. I offer that observation only after long discussions with store clerks and others in the field of public service. When you approach them while yacking on your phone, they have fantasies about both you and your cell phone being busted up into a hundred pieces, set on fire and hurled off bridges.

Some of them have more vicious fantasies, but I’ll skip those for now.

“They saunter up to the counter, talking loudly on their phones, and then act like I’m the rude one because I’ve interrupted them,” said one store clerk.

“The most pompous, annoying people on the planet,” said one from an office supply store.

“I want to shove the cell phone down their throat and pull the antennae out through a nostril,” offered yet another clerk.

OK. I made that last one up. But loathing of the cell-phone people is hot and ubiquitous. Store clerks despise the phone people because they are rude and difficult. Other store patrons are disgusted because they want to shop, get what they need and cash out. They do not want to hear all about the self-important guy’s dating life or the loud-mouthed woman’s woeful romantic situation.

I have a strong feeling that Stephen King dislikes you, too, cell phone people. Have you read his new novel “The Cell?” It’s all about you. In the book, a strong signal from space ruins the minds of everyone who is talking on a cell phone at a precise moment on a precise day. And since you are on the cell phone even when you are visiting the restroom, attending a funeral or sleeping, Mouthy McMouth, you are most certainly toast.

And good riddance to you. We have never been fooled into believing you are important or impressive or enviable. We’ve always thought you were annoying and inconsiderate.

You want us to believe that the phone pressed to your head is a symbol of success and importance. But a 10-year-old with a paper route can afford a cell phone these days, Mr. Pay Attention To Me Because I Am Important. And most 10-year-olds have better sense than to yack on a phone while standing in line at a public place, because they understand on an instinctive level that people who do so are obnoxious and worthy of the scorn that follows them around like cellular signals from space.

What does this mean for you? It means that you irritate 99 percent of the population, including 10-year-old children and Stephen King.

I firmly believe that an overwhelming majority of the people are inherently nice. They seldom have fantasies about maiming their fellow man. Then one of you phone people steps into traffic with a phone pressed to your ear. You do not look right. You do not look left. You simply step into traffic as if the very nature of your phone call is so compelling, it will serve as a gigantic airbag cushioning you from the impact of a car coming along at 40 mph.

It won’t. Step in front of my car and find out.

Your phone call is not that important. Nobody is fooled. You are not negotiating a stock transfer worth a hundred million dollars. You are not buying the Red Sox. You are not lining up a date with a super model and your caller is not inviting you to the Oscars. Even if you were, we wouldn’t care. We would think you were annoying and pretentious and superficial.

You are talking to your best friend Tony about the party you plan to attend. Or you are babbling with five times the octaves necessary for the conversation to your sister Beverly who just broke up with her boyfriend. And you want the rest of us to believe that the drama in your life is worth this disruption to ours. And we’re not buying it. I know this because everybody I ask about it will drop everything they are doing to adequately express how they feel about you public cell-phone people.

“They … make … me … so … mad!” said one woman, who had a different hand gesture for each word spoken on the matter. “They … are … the … most … arrogant …”

At which point, both words and gestures became too obscene for me to describe here. And so I’m passing it on, lest you wonder how you are perceived by the world engulfed in the cloud of your cell-phone conversations. You are despised. You are loathed.

And Stephen King thinks you suck.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He only talks on his cell phone in parking lots and abandoned warehouses.