TELEPHONE

 
Remember real telephones? The ones that were black and heavy and were plugged into the wall so you always knew where to find them? They didn't get lost under the couch or in a coat pocket and they didn't need to be recharged - ever. They served one purpose - to make or receive a phone call. They all had the same ring which sounded like this - "♫RING RING♫". And there were two volume settings - loud and louder. Pretty straight forward stuff. They were not an expression of your personal lifestyle, unless your lifestyle was to be functional, useful and reliable. Which now that I think of it, is not such a bad lifestyle to have.

Every house had one phone that actually belonged to the phone company. Everyone shared and waited their turn to use the phone and if it rang when you were not home - nothing happened. A phone was solid and built for comfort rather than style, you could cradle the receiver on your shoulder and file your nails, watch TV, take notes or just doodle - try that with a sleek portable or a slippery little cell phone. Or if you were really angry you could slam a phone down hard to express your outrage - try that with your $200.00 Blackberry.... go ahead, I dare you.

Of course phones were not always for serious use. You could make pretty good prank calls with them (Hello, is this Hector Hogg? Yes? I have a message for you - Oink Oink Snort Chortle) and then hang up real quick. You wouldn't dare do that now, they can track you down with the little chip in your cellphone, an improvement I suspect Mr. Hogg would very much appreciate. You could also do amazing tricks like making your own phone ring - just dial 1234567890. What fun! You could call anyone in the world for free if you called "person to person" and then hung up real fast so no charges were incurred. Imagine the rush of calling up famous movie stars and then hanging up on them! Good times!

But perhaps the greatest thing about real phones is that they were very discouraging for telemarketers - can you imagine dialing hundreds of calls a day like this (the * is the clicking sound of the rotary dial) 1* 5***** 0********** 6****** 4**** 5***** 5***** 1* 6****** 4**** 6****** - obviously it would have been too much bother to bother.

So when you are in a crowd and someone's pants or purse starts vibrating and playing Yankee Doodle - you will forgive my laughter at how silly you all look desperately searching to see if it might be you.  Sorry, but I will have to cut this blog short, there's the phone..... ♫RING RING♫