The second-silliest traffic arrangement in the Meadow City — second only to the welcome-but-stay-off-this-street messages on Seventh Street — is around the Old Town Plaza.

Let me explain:

There are five ways to enter the Plaza: from Bridge Street, North Gonzales, Hot Springs, West National and South Pacific. But in some cases, once you’re in that magic circle, you still need to yield to traffic coming from Hot Springs and from South Pacific.

The configuration — called a “circus” in other countries — is bad for traffic rounding the park and heading east, toward Bridge Street, or back around the park.

Most cumbersome is having to yield to traffic coming from South Pacific, in the area of Art and Stones. Why? Because the stretch is w-a-y too long, and by the time motorists yield for one car, there are more coming down the pike.

Wouldn’t it be great if all traffic entering the park area needed to yield to vehicles already there?

Wednesday, as I was entering the Plaza from South Pacific — I had the right-of-way — I got cut off by a woman driving a big car bearing veterans’ plates. Though she was supposed to yield, she apparently never saw me. I could see she was punching buttons on her cell phone (otherwise, she was trying her luck at a game of Pac-Man).

I wondered why an elderly woman (well, my age anyway), would be driving distractedly as she texted someone. Texting is the act of tapping letters into a cell phone and sending that message to someone else, who will read it off the screen. I previously believed cell phone usage was restricted to the young, who believe a cell phone works only in a moving car.

My family became intrigued by the cell phone some 10 years ago when a friend loaned us hers, as we drove to the airport. And though there really wasn’t any urgency, we became curious and unpacked a huge phone in a box that could have held a dozen pairs of shoes owned by Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines.

First question we all ask when calling another cell: “Where are you?” First statement we all make if calling a land line: “We’re here at the airport, calling on our cell.”

Did we realize a decade ago, when we first tried out that behemoth, that technology would evolve to the point where everybody had a cell phone? We used to worry about how to notify authorities if we saw a breakdown or an accident on the highway. Once, we drove to a phone booth in Bernalillo to make our call.

Currently, emergency crews probably worry more about receiving too many calls for the same accident. Yet it’s safer that way.

There’s a difference, however, between simply talking on a cell phone and texting while driving. Texting differs from conversation in the sense that it requires pressing keys that spell out a message.

Anyone who’s ever entered names and numbers into a cordless phone knows that it takes practice. The first letter key, for example, contains A, B and C. In order to enter a “C,” the puncher needs to punch the same key three times.

That’s complicated enough. So how can people, while driving, avert their eyes long enough to think through a process complicated enough for one who’s stationary? Is there a one-key-equals-one-word arrangement? Yes. It’s called T9, and it intuits what you input, but that gets complicated.

I haven’t figured out how to get my cell phone out of the T9 mode which simply infers my meaning. And this lust for cellular knowledge stems more from curiosity than necessity, as I have never (on my own) completed a text message; I’ve received only a couple and wondered, Why not just talk instead of looking at, hitting, and sometimes missing, those little buttons?

During a rainstorm last evening, I sat on the front porch determined to stop the first kid I saw and ask for advice. I don’t even know the name of the boy on a bicycle who came into my driveway desiring shelter under our Chinese elm.

He instantly became the subject of my experiment. No, he doesn’t own a cell phone, but yes, he could help. So with Rachmaninoff-type strokes, he punched out a message which he sent to my son’s cell phone. Diego responded instantly, but all I learned was 1) that the neighbor child had been able to conjure up a message, 2) my son received it and 3) he responded.

As to the magic of the process, the how-to-do-it nitty-gritty technique, I never caught it. It’s like modes of instruction in which the teacher says, “Watch me” but doesn’t let the tyro’s hands touch the equipment.

Some define “genius” as the ability to make the difficult seem easy. What then must have been the reaction of observers decades ago when an expert typist would churn out 80 wpm without even looking at the keys? Have today’s youngsters acquired such a skill?

I’m impressed by the digital dexterity of the neighbor but was also told that most kids his age, around 12, are just as adept. That’s nothing to text home about.

Last night, with grandson and namesake accompanying me, and hoping to emulate our elderly woman with veterans’ plates, I drove to the Plaza to try composing a text message while in the car, holding the cell phone inches away. I concentrated, seldom looking up from the cell phone. It didn’t work, and I was unable to locate the “delete” key.

Interestingly, not a single motorist honked or yelled at me, admonishing me to “hang up and drive,” or flipped off my flip phone or me.

And that might be because people don’t usually honk at, yell at or gesture to people who are parked well off to the side, as we were.