I was thinking about phones the other day. How my cell phone has now become my computer, my news source, my communication vehicle, my weather reporter, my traffic camera, my travel map, my photo album that entertains the grandlittles, my dictionary, my research companion, my home's utility app, and my source of games like Wordle.
Which got to me thinking about when we finally cut the proverbial cord on our ‘landline’ and how odd that felt. The landline and I had been through a lot together; super-duper good news and some really awful news. When we finally gave it up, I remember feeling a lot liberated but a bit sad too. No longer would the phone ring and I’d think: That'll be Dad. (Side note: He insisted on calling our landline as he was convinced that if he called my cell phone I’d crash the car – whether I was actually driving or not.)
Which got me to thinking back much further to my young adult days after college when I lived in a rural area of Idaho and our phone line was a party line. I’d never had a party line before, so this was an interesting experience for me. On more than one occasion (okay, in reality it was more than once a week) I had to drive up the hill to the other house on our party line, pound on the door to wake someone up (they were usually drunk & passed out or hungover and passed out) and tell them to hang up their damn phone.
My folks could never understand why I was on the phone SO MUCH (I wasn't, per the paragraph above) as all they got was a busy signal. And being a good daughter, I never wanted them to know about the party line situation. They struggled to understand why I lived where I lived anyway, and drunk party-line neighbors might just have pushed them over the edge.
All this thinking about phones got me to laughing over a story my Mom told me. Way back when I was about 3, our phone connected to an operator. You’d pick it up, the nice operator would answer, you’d tell her the number you wanted to call, and she’d do the calling for you. Evidently, I figured all this out and would often pick up the phone and chatter away with the very nice and patient operator. One day, the very nice and patient operator called my Mom and asked her to put the phone up higher away from my reach as I had taken to calling and saying ‘Hi Nice Lady’, chattering away, and then keeping her line open when she needed it for other people.
Hmmmmm … and all this thinking got me to realizing that perhaps my 3-year -old self, who tied up the phone line in my hometown, might have been victim of a little Karma as an adult when I had a party line of my own and neighbors who tied up MY line.
Coming full circle to all this phone thinking – it’s mind boggling to me how we’ve gone from an operator who connected us to someone else, to a cell phone that literally connects us to the rest of the world. Technology is pretty darn amazing when you think about it.
Oh, and hey. Enough about the old days. Gotta run now ... I think it’s that time of day where I tackle my phone's Wordle game.
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