Grandma Henke

My son in law’s blog on “Disregard For The Present” reminded me of the following blog I wrote a while back but hadn’t posted:      

When I was a little girl we got our first telephone.    It was heavy and black and had a very short cord which meant you had to stand next to the wall to talk on it.   It also didn’t have any numbers.   When you wanted to call someone you would pick up the phone and dial the operator would come on and say, “Number please” and you would tell her who you wanted to talk to whether you had their number or not … and she would connect you.     (You could also ask her the time and she’d tell you.)     And here’s an unbelievable thing …  If you were home alone and scared, she would know by the tone of your voice and talk to you for a while.     If the line you needed to call was busy, and your call was important, she would break in on the other line and tell them to hang up.      We had a party line of twelve houses, which meant we weren’t to spend much time on the phone … except for one of our neighbors who flagrantly broke the  rule and talked often and forever.    (She also broke the other rule and listened in on all of the other conversations.)   

So now skip about fifty-eight years or so.    We have gone from a party line of twelve to private lines with multiple telephones throughout the house that do not even have a cord attached (and so, of course, you can never find one when you need it.)    Not only that, each adult or child over twelve has a personal cellular phone that sings, records, takes pictures, and sends and takes messages.   It also tells you who the caller is before you answer it.      It is like having a personal secretary in your pocket but at the same time it has robbed us of our solitude.

For years I had it in my mind that the telephone ring could not be ignored under any circumstances.    This probably was due to the fact that most telephone calls way back when were important, or at least it was from someone you personally knew.      I’m sure I am not the only person who used to think the telephone was the boss of me, who would stop whatever I was doing to run to answer it, only to pick it up to hear the “click” as the call was disconnected.       

When Lynn was the Mayor of our little town the only uninterrupted time we could find to ourselves was if we sat in our car at a location where no one would recognize us.      When we absolutely had to have some solitude we would leave town or go on one of our “car dates”.      THEN we got cellular phones and foolishly took them with us everywhere we went; after all, it was the convenience of all conveniences.       This, ultimately took away all of our solitude and alone time … because we just couldn’t risk not answering the phone in case it was an important call.    

I don’t know when I had my first “AHA” moment and realized I was a slave to my telephones and that it was okay to ignore them, or better yet, turn off the ringer, or even better yet, turn it completely off for a period of time.    I mean after all that personal secretary continued to work and take messages even if I could have answered it and didn’t.    

I think we get too wrapped up in technology now days and it is robbing us of meaningful relationships and quiet moments of reflection and solitude.     I especially hate it when I am holding a conversation with another person, or out to lunch with someone and they stop our conversation to take a telephone call.   I also find it annoying when I am talking to someone on the phone and they ask me to hold because they have another call.   What … am I not important enough?     My husband and I fought the “call waiting” feature for years because we felt it was rude to put one call on hold while we answered another.   Our cellular phones now do have “call waiting”, but they also have “caller identification” so unless we are expecting a very important call we let our personal secretaries take a message and return the call when it is more convenient.

We need to not forget consideration and good manners just because it is so easy to communicate with the entire world at the punch of a key.   When you put one conversation on hold while you start another one it gives a distinct message to the first person.  The message this sends is “Stop talking to me because this other person might have something more important than you do”.  Is it really the message you want them to have?

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