What happened to phone calls?

Photo cred: Catherine Ledoux Photography

I pick up my pink old school looking landline at home and automatically dial my husband’s number and place the phone absent-mindedly between my right shoulder and neck as I type something up in the computer.
 
I immediately realize this is a move I haven’t done in a long time. One that tells you quite there is a giant time gap that separates my youth and today’s new way of functioning. It suddenly hits me: who else around me still holds a phone receiver in a day? Better yet, who still has phones numbers tattooed in their hippocampus? I’m ready to bet that not that many would be functional without their smart phones storing those numbers, even the basic ones.

I come from a time when you knew phone numbers so well that in dialing, your finger knows exactly where to go and your ears know exactly the little song that those numbers combined will make on the dial pad. Wait, a dial pad? Excuse me? Who still uses those?

Me, and I’d like to bring them back. Why, I could recite at least ten phone numbers I still know by memory, like a poem.

There was a time when the brain was challenged to remember a combination of seven numbers and to help us memorize them, we had phone books. As I was speaking on the phone, holding the receiver in my hand, a vintage posture, it took me back to times where I used to spend hours on the phone with friends. My ear used to be read and warm from pressing the phone too long. How about running to the phone when it rang? We run from it now.

What is hard to comprehend is how smart phones have made everything so available while at the same time, rendered humans contact nearly extinct. While I don’t believe actual distance kills relationships, I do believe slow and overly delayed texts or responses do.

Depending on what you expect in your relationship or friendships, proximity is created by being consistent and that predictability leads to trust in another person’s behavior and intentions. Do we not realize that a phone call is far more efficient than texting down every word? Do we not prefer hearing the person’s voice rather than guessing the person’s tone and emotions? 

While there is indeed something romantic to reading a text, like a letter in the mail as well as pragmatism in the “I respond when I want to” which gives you the freedom to prioritize your tasks the way you need to, it's not the same as live conversation.

Texting has stripped us of our conversational skills and of our spontaneity. It has made phone calls awkward or intrusive. There is hardly anyone I am comfortable calling nowadays. I  feel they would A) think I am disturbing their day no matter what time I am calling at or B) The callee would see my name appear on their phone and ignore it.

As I sit in my studio contemplating this, I am not sure which one is worse. There are only a handful of people I am confident I can call at any time and I know they will pick up (and I cherish them). What happened to calling just because? Calling your friend to vent about something? The sound of the phone ringing is a thing of the past and it’s yet another thing I am sad to see go.
 
You'll never know when the last time you'll hear a person's voice will be. ​Someone is calling to hear you or tell you something, even if it’s just not to forget to buy spinach, phone calls are precious. Besides, you can walk and talk, but can you text and walk?  Texting can be such a pain and this is coming from a writer. 

Back in the day, there was always something comforting in seeing a phone sitting on your night table. Hearing the gentle hum of the line waiting for you to dial. The wailing beeping it made when you waited too long to dial, urging you to hang up. Heck, just hanging up the phone was a classic move. Slamming the phone was another thing too, quite satisfying after a frustrating conversation I must say. How about having your own extra phone line at work and then etching that on a business card? That was a social status in itself.

I still remember speaking to my close friends on the phone in high school. After spending entire days together, we still couldn’t get enough and had to call each other to talk and goof off some more. As I type this, the sound of our young girl voices rises in my head and I hear us conspiring for the day ahead, leaving absolutely no written trace on the telling of our most appalling secrets!

Confetti for land lines.