It can be hard to help friends in need.

So let's get some inspiration from authors Langston Hughes, Simon Rich, and Miranda

July.

Coming up on selected shorts, fresh ideas about accountability, advice, and learning to swim without a pool.

I'm Meg Wallitzer. Stay right where you are.

You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction,

one short story at a time.

When was the last time you were out to eat, just you and a friend, and whenever there was a little pause in the conversation,

your friend picked up their phone to answer a text or check email?

The first time, you didn't mind,

but then it happened again and again and again, your friend occupied by the glow of the screen and you stranded in silence with your Caesar salad. Weird, you thought, until it happened again

the next time you went out to dinner and the next. So you wondered what would

happen if during her big monologue about her passive aggressive sister-in-law, you whipped out a book

and just started reading. You love your friend. You want to continue to love your friend.

So when is it time to craft your complaint, take a deep breath and speak up?

While I don't have a definitive answer for you or for any of us coping with the scourge of

phone snubbing, we all might find one in this episode of Selected Shorts.

Today's stories are about people who have fallen into a certain pattern of behavior

and about others in their immediate orbit who

recognize the pitfalls of those ingrained habits. While the stakes aren't life and death,

as they can be in the real world, these funny tales by Simon Rich, Langston Hughes, and Miranda

July, involve interventions of a sort, an attempt to help friends, loved ones, even strangers,

...