Phone Progressions & Obsessions

I can remember a time when a telephone was a relatively simple thing. You picked up the handset, then dialed a phone number on a rotary dial. After each number, you had to patiently wait for the click-click-click to finish before you could dial the next digit. I always hated dialing phone numbers with the larger digits (ex. 789-9988) as it took so long to complete. It also had a tendency to give you a sore index finger!

The push button phone was a welcomed improvement. It was painless and you could dial a phone number in a fraction of the time. And as an added bonus, we would now be able to press 1 for English. Try doing that with a rotary dial phone!

Let's fast forward a couple of decades.....

When the cell/car phone was introduced, it was a convenience mainly used by businessmen. The price of the phone and airtime was pretty steep. I can remember phone calls costing something like a buck a minute. So, discussing the latest episode of Jersey Shore with your sister-in-law on the way to the grocery store didn't make a whole lot of sense.

At some point, cell phones became affordable to almost anyone. Today, every kid over the age of five has one. (I think the cell phone has become the new standard gift among kindergarten graduates.) And I could have swore that I saw a homeless guy yapping on one while pushing a shopping cart underneath the Jones Falls Expressway a few weeks ago.

Actually, we no longer use "cell phones". We now have mobile phones. And these pieces of modern technology are used for almost everything except talking. You can take pictures, play games, catch a TV show, send "tweets", trade stocks or even hurl a profane insult via Facebook. With all of these features, I'll bet some people are surprised when an actual phone call comes through. They're probably like, "Hey dude, what's that ringing noise? How do I make it stop?"

I'm always amazed with the kids and the text messaging. You'll see three or four of them walking abreast in a shopping mall. From a distance, they resemble a football team's offensive line. If you get in their path, they'll blindly run you over. Not a word between them as they rapidly send off important encrypted messages such as ROTFLMAO. (If a staircase happened to come into their path, they would all surely go for a tumble and be ROTF but certainly not LTAO.) Their thumbs work at a frantic pace, much like Forrest Gump playing a game of ping-pong. And if the sky fell, they would be totally oblivious to it. If we could just find a way to channel this concentration into their schoolwork, we'd have a new generation of Einstein's!

And did you ever notice what happens when a kid's phone gets lost or broken? It's like their world comes to an abrupt end. And when you try to console them by saying, "For God's sake. It's just a phone." They'll respond, "It's not just a phone! It's my life!"

What am I missing here??

With all of this being said, aside from an occasional text message, I still use my phone for actual phone calls. Call me crazy, but I guess I'm just a traditionalist at heart.......

KW