I have seen the public and private use of telephones and the evolution of telephone technology develop astronomically in my somewhat limited but ever extending lifetime. You see, when I was born (a looooong time ago during the Eisenhower presidency when there were only 49 states,) our little town of Ozark, Alabama still featured a majority of residential party lines and still used four-digit or five digit dialing (in the words of Forrest Gump-I was too young to remember being born.)
By the time I was old enough to actually dial the phone and know someone else who would answer and care to converse with me, our family had not one but TWO phone company owned, wall mounted, rotary dial telephones—one in the kitchen and one in the “family room in the basement. Our new house was PRE-WIRED for a telephone. The phone number was 774-8487 and a three minute, long distance, government regulated, AT&T call to the next county cost $8,000—so no one called long distance back then unless you were rich or someone was dead or dieing.
In spite of our highly developed telephonic sophistication, even my parents didn’t have a phone in their bedroom. You didn’t need one back then, because no one ever dared to call after dark unless someone was dead, dieing, or looking to be one of the above in short order. My father would personally see to it. Of course there were the occasional prank calls featuring questions like “do you have Prince Albert in a can” or “is your refrigerator running”—simple things for simple minds.
There were phone booths everywhere and a local call cost you a whopping ten cents. I dare you to try to find a pay phone today except at the airport (or possibly the police station?). Kids and hobos (ok, ok, ok, urban outdoorsmen) alike routinely played their favorite game--payphone roulette-- by pressing the coin return button hoping for a ten-cent prize to fall out.
I worked at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta part time while I was in college in the late 1970’s and I was amazed that their hotel rooms had telephones in the bathroom adjacent to the toilet. “Who the heck were these people that they couldn’t sit down and have peace and quite in such a personal, private, situation?” How things have changed today…you can’t use a public restroom or pay for a head of lettuce at the grocery store without listening to some moron droning on endlessly about something that could have waited until they got home. These same people call home to say they are turning into the driveway…
The first time I saw a remote phone was on the TV show “Hart to Hart.” You know, the 1970’s weekly show about the wealthy California detective couple that drove around in their Benz convertibles with the black telephone handset attached to a radio-telephone the size of a small file cabinet mounted in the trunk?
I got my first cell phone in 1990. I was a big shot owner of my first Georgia Corporation and the portable 3-watt “bag phone” cost over $600 as I recall. The Bellsouth sales rep actually came to my office, delivered the phone to me, and gave me instructions on how to use it. Local calls were $.60 per minute and $1.00 or more per minute when you were “roaming” out of your home service area (which usually began somewhere down the street a few hundred yards,) in addition to a $3.95 roaming fee. Long distance charges were extra. Good God I spent a lot of money on that phone—I remember making one phone call driving up interstate I-85 when I was working on a project bid that cost $75 for less than an hour.
Cell phones were still a novelty back then and I couldn’t take mine with me into a meeting or a restaurant without someone asking to “look” at it. Complete strangers would actually ask to place a call just to act like a hick and tell so-and-so “guess where I’m calling from?” I must admit that there was a certain amount of ego rush associated with having a cell phone back then, but the novelty soon wore off when the bills came in and it was soon reduced to just another tool of doing business.
I am currently dragging my fourth evolution of cell phone technology around with me and, in spite of the reduction in size and promised improvements in coverage area and performance, fully half of my calls end in the words “IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I’LL CALL YOU BACK IN A MINUTE.” They aught to have a button that you can press that will utter those words (or some variation thereof) automatically when you loose the signal after having five bars on the signal meter just two seconds earlier.
Then the “airphone” came to Delta airliners back in the mid 1990’s. Suddenly mobile phone technology was “in the air” instead of just “on the air.” The seatback mounted phones allowed you to talk to your bookie, sell some stock, or spend an extra precious half-hour worrying about the voice mail you just retrieved at thirty-five thousand feet. I admit that I wasted a few hundred dollars making unnecessary calls just because I could. “Hey honey, guess where I am….”
Up until recently, commercial airliners have continued to be a sanctuary for all of us weary mobile phoners, giving us a requiem from the mindless blathering of insensitive young cell phone users once the airplane pushed back from the gate. Ahhh, the sound of silence as the self-important chick with the b*tch attitude in the seat behind you is forced to shut up about the “blaa-blaa” merger for 55 minutes between Charlotte and Atlanta.
Sorry folks, but it looks like the FCC is about to let things change when it comes to cell phone usage on commercial flights. As a result, I may just start taking the bus…wait a minute…there might be more cell phones on a Greyhound bus than on a Delta flight. The difference is the bus passengers use prepaid minutes. AHHHHHH!
Let’s face it, many times I wish for the days when I wasn’t supposed to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I believe that I’ve suffered mentally and physically as a result of the so-called technological improvements that I’ve paid so much for over the years.
I still maintain the organizational skills from that era. I used to do projects in Malaysia and Great Britain and it just required that you to plan your day around calling time zone to time zone. Back before E-mail and Fax machines and pagers and Federal Express, people still got business done and managed their personal lives quite well. You could actually go home and be at home mentally and physically.
My holiday wish for everyone is that we slow down and enjoy our lives.
Get over yourself—if you will.
And take that damn cell phone out of your ear, because if it rings once more while I’m trying to eat dinner and you start yelling some mindless drivel, I might just need to use the pay phone at the police station as a result…
Update: December 12, 2004
My favorite talk show host, Neal Boortz, has proposed a solution to defend yourself when and if they allow the use of cell phones on airliners in flight. Here is what your do.
When your neighbor takes a call in flight and becomes obnoxious, just pick up the "SkyMall" catalogue conviently located in your seatback pocket and begin reading loudly out loud. When he or she hangs up, you stop reading...sounds like a plan to me!
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