I suppose I really have become a bit of a cold-hearted old curmudgeon in my golden years, because I know I should have a lot more sympathy for this poor girl. And yet, I still laughed.

Teen Girl Falls In Open Manhole While Texting

NEW YORK (CBS) ?It was an accident waiting to happen — an open sewer and a 15-year-old girl who was texting while she walked.

Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness.

To get the required legal bits out of the way early, the girl is absolutely right. The DPS failed to put up orange cones and barriers around the open hole and left nobody there to attend it. They are in the wrong and she is in the right. She suffered some injuries – none life threatening, thankfully – and will doubtless be owed some compensation from the city. Yes, she should have had the common sense to be watching where she was walking, but the law is the law.

But somehow I can’t get away from the overriding social commentary found in this story. She’s walking along, obsessed with her mobile phone as so very many people are these days, and totally failing to watch where she’s placing one foot in front of the other. She strolled straight into a hole large enough to swallow a teenage girl. Legal questions aside, aren’t we allowed to ask if maybe she doesn’t bear some personal responsibility for not taking more of an interest in the world around her as she passes through it?

And for bonus points, here’s the kicker. She falls into a five foot deep sewer in an accident traumatic enough that she lost one of her shoes in the process. Yet she managed to keep hold of the phone. I’m sure there’s some sort of social moral in this tale for us somewhere, but I’m too old and dense to tease it out of the tale just now. You’re welcome to give it a go yourselves.