Please. Leave. A. Message.

I bought a new phone for the house yesterday. As I hooked it all up, I longed for the days when setting up a phone meant plugging the phone jack into the wall and that was it.

After many years, many inventors, experiments, trials and failures, the telephone was patented in 1876. Alexander Graham Bell was the lucky inventor whose "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically" was chosen. The country was soon being connected with switchboards and cables. We would never be the same again.

Now, I am nor old enough to remember the era of switchboards and party lines, but I did watch the Little House on the Prairie episode where the telephone phenomena invaded Walnut Grove. Who can forget Harriet Olsen listening to all the local gossip and using it to her advantage?

No, that was all before my time. I do remember the old rotary dial phones though and the days before touch-tone buttons. I liked putting my finger in the correctly numbered hole and moving it clockwise to the little silver stop where you would release it and find your next number. Depending on how quickly (or not) your phone moved back, sometimes made remembering the number you were dialing difficult. There was no speed dial, no memory. I liked the sound the phone made as you spun the wheel and it moved back; it was much better than the beeping today.

The phone cord was the other part of the phone I remember . The twisted, tangly, spiral cord that only let you travel so far from the phone before yanking you to an abrupt halt. Really, it was like it had a mind of it's own. Even after we moved here to the farm in 1997, our phone, for a long time had the curly cord. As you talked, and chased children, or tried to get away from their noise, you would get wrapped up in it. The little ones, of course, loved it. \

Sometime in the 1970's, the idea of a hand-held cordless phone began to be experimented with. I remember seeing TV shows where they had car phones, big and unwieldy, and I thought that it would never catch on. Technology mystified me then, as it often does today. Why would you want to carry this around? Why?!?

Fast forward about thirty years.  Of course,  I own a cell phone now. A sleek, little phone in a zebra case that goes with me everywhere. I has become like another hand; I feel a little unconnected without it. I've gotten used to having it around, just like most of society. 

I do have days that I think about what we did before answering machines, cell phones, and instant communication. If we couldn't get through, we'd try again later. If the message was really important, it got delivered one way or another. We made sure what we had to say was important. We paid by the minute, so chatting with friends for hours was discouraged. Besides,  I would be seeing my friends the next day anyhow. It was all just different. 

Today, I like to text. I like those brief "Hey I'm thinking about you!" messages. But sometimes, like yesterday, when hooking up a new handheld, cordless system with a manual of instructions on how to set everything up that it could do, I wanted something simpler. I don't use all the call-waiting, speed-dial, caller ID, etc that is featured. I just want to be able to get the call or have someone leave a message. Simple, right? 

I am off for my day now, cell phone in hand, ready to conquer the world. 

Love,

Dianne 

PS: It doesn't get any more simple than this: