I have a friend who never answers her telephone. Never.
I can call her. The phone rings. And rings. And rings. Then, a few minutes later, my phone lights up with a text:
“What’s up?”
What’s up? I was trying to talk to you.
This has happened so many times that I have finally stopped calling her. I figure if she wants to communicate with me, she knows where the telephone is. Apparently, she just doesn’t know what it’s for.
Which is remarkable when you think about it. The telephone was invented so people could talk to one another without being in the same room. For most of my life, that seemed like a pretty good idea.
Now we have turned the telephone into everything except a telephone.
Kids carry around little computers that can make telephone calls, but they use them to send text messages, make videos, watch other people make videos, take pictures of their lunch and communicate with people who are sitting 12 feet away.
When I was a kid, getting a telephone was a big deal.
There was usually one in the house. It was attached to the wall. If you wanted to talk to somebody, you walked over to it, picked up the receiver and dialed the number.
And if you wanted to talk to a girl you liked, you had to call her house. Which meant you might have to talk to her father.
That was enough to make you reconsider romance.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Smith? This is Mitch. May I speak to Susan?”
There was a pause.
“Who?”
“Mitch.”
“Mitch who?”
At that point you were already sweating.
And if Susan wasn’t home, you couldn’t text her. You couldn’t send her a Snapchat. You couldn’t leave her a voice memo. You couldn’t send a carrier pigeon. You had to call back later.
We loved telephones. We spent hours on them. We talked about nothing. We talked about school. We talked about baseball. We talked about who was going to the movies Friday night.
Teenagers could tie up a telephone line for hours discussing absolutely nothing.
Today, that same teenager may spend six hours a day on the phone. Just not talking.
He’ll text. He’ll Snapchat. He’ll TikTok. He’ll send somebody a video of a dog falling off a couch.
But ask him to make an actual telephone call and suddenly you’re asking him to perform brain surgery.
I understand that texting is convenient. Sometimes you don’t need a conversation. Sometimes you just need to say, “I’m running five minutes late.” But we’ve reached the point where people will exchange 37 text messages rather than spend 90 seconds talking.
And don’t get me started on people who text “Can I call you?” Yes. That’s why phones have numbers. Call me.
If you need to tell me something complicated, call me. If you’ve got a story, call me. If you’re going to send me six paragraphs by text, for the love of Alexander Graham Bell, just call.
The telephone is still sitting there. It hasn’t done anything wrong. It would probably be thrilled to hear from you. And if I call you, don’t text me asking what’s up.
Nothing is up.
I was just trying to talk to you.
