When I acquired my first cell phone I considered it to be a supplement, an additional tool, a secondary means of communication. I was still dedicated to my landline. But what happened next, what I didn’t expect to happen, is an all too familiar story. The new replaces the old. Cell phones – which now are also clocks, internet machines, photo albums and, dare I say it, record players – have not only become ubiquitous, they have become all powerful. Suddenly we don’t need landlines. Suddenly we don’t even need to talk on the phone. We can text. Suddenly we don’t even need talk to each other in public. We can just stare at our phones.
But let me stick with landlines. My “home phone” usage has dropped precipitously…to roughly zero. Perhaps three “actual people” – people I know, people who aren’t recordings and people I might afford a conversation with – call me on the land line. Otherwise, the landline pulls in mostly recorded sales pitches, political ads, political pollsters and wrong numbers. It has become the ring of the damned. I have stopped answering the thing. As a practical fellow I have concluded: if I am not using the home phone then I should not pay for the service. But I am also nostalgic; I still find an odd comfort in the landline. It was once the only communications teat in town. Now it is obsolete - like an old phonograph - but it still looks good on the mantel. The landline is familiar, even friendly. Mostly friendly that is...except when it rings. Obviously I am at the horns of a telecommunications dilemma.
To come to terms with my landline, I decided to monitor my usage. Here are the results for last week: When I was not home, the phone rang and the machine answered. One person left an actual message. I can’t remember the nature of the message. When I was home, I mostly did not answer the phone. During the week there were three times when I picked up. Three times when I bypassed my fears of telemarketers and pollsters and answered. Three times when I heard the familiar ring and thought that it could’ve been my mother calling, or an old friend calling, or someone who owes me money calling. Three times I came up motherless, friendless and moneyless.
Two of the three calls were short, uneventful and confusing. An expectant voice chirped: “Do you have a little dog?” I replied with a full sentence. “I do not have a little dog.” Then the line went dead. This happened on two consecutive nights. After the second time, I realized I should have changed my answer. What if it paid to have a little dog? What if there are government loans or private grants for little dog owners? What if Deepak Chopra wanted to bless all the little dog owners? Alas, I will never know.
My third call of the week was more engaging, more hopeful and somewhat longer. This time the caller was from India. In his lilting Punjabi English, he told me of an amazing offer. I might qualify for a free heart screening. This was great. I could use a heart screening and free is a great price. Finally my landline was coming in handy. There were a series of questions – my age, my income, my general health. The questions came quick. My Indian interrogator, a comrade in globalization, was adept and efficient. He had asked these questions repeatedly to folks he had never met. Individuals who, like me, lived in places he had probably never even visited. He was born in a predominantly English-speaking nation that is geographically removed from other English-speaking nations. The logic of the global economy allows that this man, and many others, should work in call centers.
His next question came quickly. “Are you between the heights of four-foot ten and and six-foot five?” I'm sure he had asked this question a thousand times.
I said, “No.”
Silence. A confusing pause. “How tall are you?”
“Six-foot eight.”
Another pause. Then the kicker. “You do not qualify for the free heart screening.”
The conversation was over. That was it. I was too tall for the machine, a situation my Indian adviser could not fix. There was no one to call and no one to consult. I was too tall. My hope that the distant caller could provide something useful was for naught. More importantly, this was the one hope for my landline. The only fruitful call in an entire week had gone wrong. Perhaps my landline was useless. Is useless. Or perhaps I am just too tall. Either way, I believe it is time I bow my head to the new technology. Sorry Verizon. Sorry AT&T. Sorry Ma Bell. I respect your fiber optic cables. I respect your pin-dropping technology. But folks are just pulling those signals out of the air now. I've joined them. I'm wireless now. Part of that wireless generation. On the move. Always connected. Free from cords and cables, but not necessarily free.
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