Ring!
“Hey. Yeah I couldn’t hear you. Sounded like you were in a wind tunnel. So, how was your day?”
Sigh. That’s when you know it’s not going to be a short conversation between the guy behind you on the bus and whoever is on the other end of the line. The weird thing about those conversations is they often seem to be between a married or at least otherwise involved couple. What will they have left to talk about when they see each other at home?
My late father used to say “The telephone is an instrument of communication, not conversation.” He enforced his beliefs by limiting his children to 5 minute phone calls and refusing to pay for call waiting. There were two ways I would end-run around these regulations. One was to use the basement phone since he often wouldn’t notice I was on for a while. The other was that when I wanted to talk to the future Mrs. for any extended period of time I would call from a pay phone a few blocks from the house and have her call me back. We would tie up that line for long periods of time without fear of interruption; her parents had call waiting so if anyone urgently needed to get through there wasn’t a problem and I was only occasionally bothered by other people who needed to use the pay phone as it was located on a bus stop next to a complex of baseball fields that lacked lights and we typically spoke via this method at night.
Things were tough in the time before mobile phones eh kids? And we had to walk to school uphill both ways too.
I wonder what my late father would think of today’s world of constant contact. He died right at the start of 2001 when mobile phones were still not completely ubiquitous (they were getting there though) and for the most part they were still mostly phones and not texting devices and Internet portals. Social networks weren’t nearly as popular as they are now. People were not yet in constant contact. You could, in fact, spend time being alone, really alone. When you were away from the office you were away from work. Now there is no alone time. There are no “office hours” for white-collar types unless you can fly under the radar and avoid the Curse of the Crackberry or have the cojones to simply set your own boundaries as to when you will and won’t deal with work.
This is I believe what the techno-geeks and futurists call “progress”. I remember talking to someone right after they got their first Blackberry from their job. They said “It’s great, your office can be wherever you are!” and I said “That’s horrifying; your office can be wherever you are!”
They looked at me like I had two heads. I guess that’s why I’m an observer and not an achiever. I guess if I was a real go-getter I’d go back to school, become an anthropologist and write some best-selling PhD thesis about the effect of constant contact and communication on the public mental health, relationships, and stress-related death. But I’m not a go-getter, and frankly I don’t have the time left on the clock to do that. Instead I’ll watch and be entertained. Fun is what I’m all about anyway, as anyone can tell you on Facebook, Twitter, this blog, or phone. Call me on the bus at (917)……
Sigh. That’s when you know it’s not going to be a short conversation between the guy behind you on the bus and whoever is on the other end of the line. The weird thing about those conversations is they often seem to be between a married or at least otherwise involved couple. What will they have left to talk about when they see each other at home?
My late father used to say “The telephone is an instrument of communication, not conversation.” He enforced his beliefs by limiting his children to 5 minute phone calls and refusing to pay for call waiting. There were two ways I would end-run around these regulations. One was to use the basement phone since he often wouldn’t notice I was on for a while. The other was that when I wanted to talk to the future Mrs. for any extended period of time I would call from a pay phone a few blocks from the house and have her call me back. We would tie up that line for long periods of time without fear of interruption; her parents had call waiting so if anyone urgently needed to get through there wasn’t a problem and I was only occasionally bothered by other people who needed to use the pay phone as it was located on a bus stop next to a complex of baseball fields that lacked lights and we typically spoke via this method at night.
Things were tough in the time before mobile phones eh kids? And we had to walk to school uphill both ways too.
I wonder what my late father would think of today’s world of constant contact. He died right at the start of 2001 when mobile phones were still not completely ubiquitous (they were getting there though) and for the most part they were still mostly phones and not texting devices and Internet portals. Social networks weren’t nearly as popular as they are now. People were not yet in constant contact. You could, in fact, spend time being alone, really alone. When you were away from the office you were away from work. Now there is no alone time. There are no “office hours” for white-collar types unless you can fly under the radar and avoid the Curse of the Crackberry or have the cojones to simply set your own boundaries as to when you will and won’t deal with work.
This is I believe what the techno-geeks and futurists call “progress”. I remember talking to someone right after they got their first Blackberry from their job. They said “It’s great, your office can be wherever you are!” and I said “That’s horrifying; your office can be wherever you are!”
They looked at me like I had two heads. I guess that’s why I’m an observer and not an achiever. I guess if I was a real go-getter I’d go back to school, become an anthropologist and write some best-selling PhD thesis about the effect of constant contact and communication on the public mental health, relationships, and stress-related death. But I’m not a go-getter, and frankly I don’t have the time left on the clock to do that. Instead I’ll watch and be entertained. Fun is what I’m all about anyway, as anyone can tell you on Facebook, Twitter, this blog, or phone. Call me on the bus at (917)……
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