Friday

Ring! Ring!!

Remember when you were a kid and your parents talked about some useful tool that was no longer used and you thought--wow--what would that have been like?

I am realizing that is what my kids
 will think about many things...
including telephones whose ring tone
was actually a ring ring!

I remember a light blue turquoise-ish 
rotary dial phone
in my parents bedroom.

I thought dialing the 8 and 9 was especially annoying
and remember seeing on TV some secretaries using a pencil or something other to dial instead of getting sore finger tips.
 I thought that was genius.

Later I remember pulling the touch dial cream colored phone as far as the cord would stretch, so I could have even a little bit of privacy as I talked with my bffs on the phone.

The sound of the ring would make me jump!
I loved to answer the phone
(and would often confuse people with my just-like-Mom voice)

I would get butterflies in my stomach 
when I knew someone special was calling...
and we actually hung the phone up on the wall. 
As in--hang up the phone.

I remember my parents taking the phone "off the hook" during family nights or dinner time 
so we wouldn't be disturbed 
by the potential ring-a-ling of a phone call.

These days, I have no rotaries to dial or cords to stretch...
and my phone never rings.

I get phone calls often enough,
 but I usually have the sound set on vibrate. 
That way no naps are disturbed, and no extra noises are sounding through my house. If I do have the sound turned up, it isn't a ringing sound, it's a tune with a beat.

Truthfully...more often than not, 
I just don't answer my phone.

My little droid might be in another room, 
or I might be busy with a project.

Most of my friends know this--we do a lot of phone tag (I will always call you back!) but emails, FB messaging, & texting tend to be easier/more reliable for instant communication (depending on the day).


The rush to answer the phone is not what it once was
and the ring?


Well...that's just old school.

3 comments:

Linda said...

ohhhhhhhhh, and we still have a phone attached to a wall and a cord!

And that is a good thing, in a way, it is always charged and ready to go, and can't get lost. But ,yeah, it is kind of old school! ( and recently it HAS been giving us some trouble!)

I remember we had a big turquoise phone upstairs at our house...thinking it is kind of likely that WAS the same one we later had in our bedroom.

Upstairs the phone was on MY side of the bathroom in the hall, so I could easily take it to my room and lie on my bed and talk. I remember doing algebra homework on the phone with my friend Karen. We were both good at math and it was fun. ( I got 98 in Algebra, we also loved our teacher Mr. C) We would talk on the phone alot. Before then, I certainly talked on the phone alot with my friend Debbie Hudson. Eventually we would get off the phone and walk to each other's houses...when we moved to Walnut lane, instead of going through the back fence, through the Sharpe's backyard and driveway, and up the Pleasant Drive,when I lived on Hilltop, I could now at least go out my backdoor, hop over our back fence down by the rabbit barn, go down the hill, across the creek, through a field, and into her back yard. Now there is a neighborhood there. Which is kind of sad,but oh well. When I was little phones used a letter prefix so our number was EV8-2478. Sometime that changed ( but didn't) to 388. I don't remember the number for the kids line, but 2478 was my parents number from when we moved to Columbia till they died. Now people change numbers all the time ( cell phone, in particular)

We had a gold phone attached to the wall in the kitchen/den. Mom and dad had a phone in their room, and Daddy had a phone in his office in the basement. One time I threw the gold phone at one of my sisters. I don't think I have thrown a phone since then.

At one point Daddy got a second line for the kids, because...he wanted to make sure he had free access to make his night calls to customers...and maybe realized it was a losing battle to keep the girls off the phone at night.

JosephJ said...

I remember talking on the phone like twice in Estill Springs. I had a couple of friends I called about cub scouts or school, but it just didn't feel natural. It made more sense for me to ride my bike over to talk.

And for that matter, I didn't feel like I had much to say.

The picture changed a little bit when I was ready for the companionship of girls.

Linda said...

Dad said he really wasn't comfortable talking to girls on the phone ever, till me. And frankly, he didn't always know what to say. He said he never called any girls just "to talk". Which has led to an interesting discussion about some girls in his life before me.