My love-hate relationship with phones
Originally published in June 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.
Some years ago, I took a call at work from a gentleman who wanted to talk for a long time about why the 7:30 television programs didn’t all start at the same time.
His logic was sound. Seven-thirty, he reasoned, happens at the same time for everyone, every evening, so all the shows scheduled to start at 7:30 should begin at the same moment. If they fail to do so, then plainly the people at the networks either don’t have their watches set correctly or they don’t care.
This bothered the gentleman, and he thought I, as a journalist, had a responsibility to do something about it. He wasn’t specific about what he wanted, but his implication was that I should use the power of the press in a campaign calling for television organizations around the nation to synchronize their clocks
What could I do? Not much, unless I felt like beating my head against a wall in a frustrating “prime time at the same time” cause. But the fact is, he just wanted to get something off his chest and chose me to unload on. So I said I’d keep it in mind (I’ve never forgotten, so I kept that promise) and thanked him for calling.
This isn’t the kind of stuff I expect when a phone rings, but it is a call I often bring to mind. Because it’s funny, see, and it helps me laugh about a device I’ve seldom gotten along with.
In college, when a ringing phone was a reflection of popularity, mine was quiet. There it would sit on my dorm-room desk, mutely reminding me I was reading a magazine, watching TV or even occasionally doing homework not because I chose to, but because I didn’t have anything better to do.
I resented my phone for its silence. Sometimes I even grew suspicious of it. Was the ringer not working? Were people – maybe even girls – trying to call and not getting through?
Occasionally I’d pick up the receiver to make sure the dial tone was humming OK (it always was), then I’d leave it off the hook until the louder alert beeping started … just for something to do. After hanging it back up, I’d wonder if I missed a call during the two minutes I’d been playing.
For a while, in early adulthood, I achieved a sort of balance with my telephone. Thanks to family and friends in the state I’d left, and even more to my future wife in my new city, the phone rang enough to let me know I was wanted.
Lately, I look upon the phone as a bully. Not at work – it’d be a bad sign if people didn’t call me there – but at home, where it’s often the conduit for the rudest interruptions.
Answering our home phone is no fun. Despite being on every conceivable “Leave us the flip alone!” registry, we get regular calls from mercenaries trying to trick us into buying something. For the longest time, I’d give such callers an opportunity to pause before politely declining, but courtesy to strangers on the phone is a thing of the past. Now I’m ready to bark “Take me off your flipping list!” and hang up the second I hear a voice I don’t recognize.
Yes, I really do say “flip.” It’s a word I latched onto in the last year to substitute for most of the profanity I tried to swear off when kids became part of our household.
If my wife gets a call, I’ll just about make that person pass a lie detector test before either handing over the phone or taking a message. Heaven only knows what I’ll do when our girls start getting calls.
My relationship with my phone reached its all-time low during the election season, when four or five candidates a day were using it to send us recordings. I got the message and didn’t vote for anyone who intruded on us that way.