TECHNOLOGICAL AMUSEMENTS

When I was about ten years old (that would be 1957 if you do the math) I had one or two friends that I might call on the phone. When the infrequent need arose I would pick up the part of the phone that one held in the hand, one end for hearing the other for talking, listen to be sure no one else was on the party line, dial the number on the revolving wheel part with numbers and letters and wait for the ringing sound and answer. It wasn’t complicated. The number I was calling, if it was in the same town and it always was, consisted of four digits. If a person needed to call long distance he or she would dial O. A lady would come on the line and the caller would say “Long distance please, I need to call Aunt Mildred in Poughkeepsie at Export 4595.” After a brief wait Aunt Mildred would come on the line. If she wasn’t available the operator would say that she would try again in a little while and, sure enough, a little while later the phone would ring and the operator would say that she had Aunt Mildred on the line.

Today the phone is much easier to use. My daughter has an IPhone. Let’s say she wants to call Aunt Mildred in Poughkeepsie. She turns on her phone, selects the phone icon, selects her calling list and scrolls down to see if Aunt Mildred is listed. Of course dear old Auntie isn’t there because my daughter would rarely call one of her fictional relatives. So now my daughter goes to her IPhone internet icon and finds a site where she can look up Aunt Mildred’s phone number. Then she transfers the number to her contact list, for future calls, and then pushes the button to auto dial the number she saved. Aunt Mildred isn’t available of course; she’s at the beauty parlor having her quarterly bikini waxing. So my daughter leaves a message on the voice mail. Then she decides that she just wants to tell Aunt Mildred that her cat, which Aunt Mildred had given her a couple of years ago, got hit by a UPS truck and a text message would be better for that purpose. So she punches re-dial and enters a text message with the tragic news. The sad ending to this story is that when Aunt Mildred retrieved the text message she was so upset that she crashed her convertible into a bridge abutment and got killed. Checking text messages while driving, especially tragic ones, is a dangerous business.

Phones are so much more than they were all those years ago. My home phone is a simple device with several fine features. It has an answering machine, call waiting, speed dial, number storage for about a hundred numbers, portable handset and a couple others I don’t recall. Here are the features I use; answering machine, handset finder button, and phone. I also have a cell phone. My cell phone is an old model. It doesn’t take pictures, connect to the Internet, remember birthdays, calculate mortgage rates and payments or play a list of one thousand songs. Actually it might do some of those things but I’ve never been able to figure them out. As a matter of fact one time I accidentally set my ring-tone to play the Macarena and I’ve never been able to stop it. Texting is beyond me. All the other innovations in communication are just so many foreign words; twittering, tweaking and what ever else they’ve invented up through yesterday.

Of course every young person that reads this is thinking “What a technologically ignorant old fool this guy is.” And many people my age, or older, who have mastered a lot of these devices are thinking the same thing. But that’s okay. I don’t have to worry about text messages causing my death. Phone calls will remain phone calls and once in a while I’ll talk to a real live person. If people need to send me messages, I have mastered the skills of email. And computers are part of my technological arsenal along with the microwave oven and digital camera. But I’m holding fast on the telephone, trying to keep it in a slightly more innocent and less complicated age. I have to quit now. The Macarena is playing.

Have a fine day.