Yikes! There Goes The Phone!!

I hate chatting on the phone. I have an almost pathological distaste for it which friends or acquaintances don’t seem to quie believe, deep down. So they keep calling at the most unfavourable times, and then wonder why I sound distant or a bit absent, not knowing perhaps that at the very moment they have buzzed me to fill me in on their life history I am surfing the net or writing something or talking to someone else or even just plain meditating on the sea and sky which my bedroom window looks on to.

Once a guy trying to relieve the tedium of his own life happened to call when my computer engineer was busy explaining to me how to synchronise my palmtop with the desktop and was miffed when I actually forgot that he was on the line and even forgot to make the rudimentary “uh-huh, uh-huh” noises on the phone you usually indulge in, to persuade the person at the other end of the line that you are listening with great interest though you are most likely falling asleep and trying not to snore.

It wasn’t always like that of course. There was a time when I used to be obsessed with the phone and was known (much to my mother's disgust) to chat for ages, at least with a handful of bosom pals with whom I never seemed to run out of conversation. One night I broke my own record by yapping on the phone for over two hours until my ear actually began to hurt from prolongued contact with the receiver. Those were the times of course, when regardless for how long you spoke you were charged for just one call. Now I sometimes ask myself if I’m the same person.

Something possibly changed in me the day the phone rang and I rushed to get it. That was incidentally over twenty years ago. I had just come out of the shower, my feet were wet and before I reached the shrieking instrument and before I knew it I’d landed on my ass and cracked my tail bone. Four weeks in bed cured me of any fondness for phones in general.

I love meeting people and I like mailing them or writing to them. Generally I enjoy being in contact with human beings. But NOT ON THE PHONE. Which I use strictly for information purposes. To confirm appointments, to cancel appointments, to communicate good tidings, to communicate bad news and so on, to plan something or other

This, I believe is what a telephone was originally intended for, in the old days. So in those good old fashioned days is no doubt where I still belong!

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