Let’s talk about the telephone, shall we? You’ll probably use one today, right?
And, if you’re like me, you’ll dig through your car frantically looking for it, using the flashlight app on your phone to search, before finally realizing that it’s been in your hand all along.
I only grudgingly ever started using a smart phone many years ago when our newspaper bosses handed them out to us like Halloween candy. They weren’t being generous, of course, they just wanted to have us on a leash. Until then, I’d been perfectly happy with my flip phone, which even a chimpanzee could operate in the middle of a hurricane.
When they first handed me the Android device, I was annoyed that I had to learn yet more technology. I am not a first adopter. I am a late adopter. I’d rather rub ground glass into my eyes than learn new electronic skills.
At first, every time I tried to make a call, I accidentally hung up. I had no idea how this was happening, but it was proving my supposition that my now suddenly redundant flip phone was infinitely better. (Ironically, nowadays some Gen Z types are going back to flip phones, to detox from their smart phone addictions.)
Then, one of my colleagues who’s considerably more clever than I am pointed out that I needed to stop thinking of it as a telephone. “Just think of it as a tiny computer that has a phone inside of it.”
And, for some reason, that clicked. I instantly stopped accidentally cutting off calls, maybe because my phone realized I no longer hated it.
And it was mere nanoseconds before I was looking up movie times, the name of that song I liked, using the Google calendar, texting people that I was late yet again and all the myriad other things one can do on a tiny computer.
I even gave up my hasty plan to move to Pennsylvania and become Amish.
Later, more bosses upgraded us all to iPhones, and I went through the same Luddite routine of complaints. But I quickly learned that my iPhone was even more intuitive and easy to use, and I became a devotee. Today, I know I couldn’t live for more than 19 seconds without my mobile phone, my constant and best companion — a state I never could have imagined when I was a girl. (No, this is not an infomercial.)
However, even though I’m as old as dirt, I do have some things in common with you young folks today. Because I hate to talk on the phone.
Have you ever tried to actually call anyone under the age of 35? You’d have better luck calling the Loch Ness Monster.
Young people just can’t grasp why anyone would voluntarily make a phone call when it’s so much easier to text. I have learned to make appointments to actually call people, so they’re not taken aback by the sound of my rude ringtone interrupting their vital shopping trip to Costco.
And I understand this. After a lifetime as a newspaper reporter, I no longer enjoy chatting on the phone. For decades, I spent countless hours hanging onto my office telephone, while my hand cramped and I shoveled fast food into my mouth at my desk, trying to get hold of people who may or may not have been avoiding me. And, if they did answer, trying to persuade them to talk to me about something I desperately needed to know for the story I was writing, and they were highly reluctant to tell me.
This was a daily occurrence. And, of course, no one ever called me back until right before my deadline, requiring me to write frantically like an insane person to finish my story before an editor yelled at me.
Most reporters are much more scared of their editors than of anything else, which is why they’ll do all sorts of things no sane person would do. Like knock on strangers’ doors at 9 p.m. to ask if they really embezzled all that money. Or go out to a gang-infested neighborhood alone in the dark and try to find a witness to that night’s murder du jour.
The result of this is that I have a bit of PTSD involving talking on the telephone. I’d really rather not. This is hard for some of my friends to understand. They just think I’m just a jerk. Well, OK, I am, but that’s not why.
But, really, they just need to text me and make an appointment to call. I’ll put it in my calendar, and, then, I’ll answer. Probably.
Want to email me? I’m at [email protected]. I especially like it when you point out my grammatical errors or give me diet tips. Also, look for me on Facebook at facebook.com/FrumpyMiddleagedMom/
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