Monday, January 25, 2010

one ringie dingie

It's harvest gold and it's hanging on the green panelled kitchen wall with an impossibly tangled, stretched out cord. If I close my eyes I can feel my index finger slip in and pull back the dial. I can even hear the noise it makes. It's name was 897-6236.

When I was little, I would scramble up the bar stool and plop down on our fashionably coordinated yellow kitchen counter to answer it. Legs dangling, I listened intently as my sister told me all the juicy details about what it was like to be away at college.

Older still, I pulled that phone as far as I could into the closet to sneak a little privacy. My Finger twisting around in the cord I moved through a teen's right of passage.

Obviously, there were no answering machines when I was a kid. If somebody called and there was no answer, you called back. The logical assumption was that the person you were calling was either out or busy. If we missed a call, my Dad always said "If it's important, they'll call back". There is profound wisdom in this comment.

Some how - some way - our parents managed to raise us safely without a cell phone. Successful relationships were had -successful careers too. All without the luxury of cell phones.

Don't get me wrong. I have a Black Berry that I am passionately in lust with. However, just because I am having the affair, does not mean I will carry it with me always, frantically look at it every 4 minutes or want to talk on the phone each time someone else wants to.

So, once and for all, I offer up my apologies to all of my friends. Trust me, it's not personal.

If I had $1 for each time I've heard (whine while you say it) "you never answer your phone", I could get an I-Phone (which I fully intend to do soon!).

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE it!!!! I can see the phone cord, see the kitchen, and hear the same comments from my own dad "They'll call back" (secretly hoping that they wouldn't so that he could get some peace, no doubt). Good stuff. So "Leslie talks too much in class?" I was: "constantly passes notes." Our mission was to drive them mad - but at least it was steady pay, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Chris! Yes, if it were not for us, those nuns (in my case) would not have had anything to do with their rulers.

    ReplyDelete