Picking up the phone

I remember when I was a little girl that the ringing phone sent everyone into motion.  My little sister and I would jump up, racing our parents to answer.  This was after rotary but before cordless and long before caller ID.  Answering the phone was an adventure.  Who is calling?  Is it someone who wants to play with me or just someone for my parents who wants to talk about boring adult stuff?  The phone was the social media and everyone learned how to do it.  Little kids had play rotary phones even though they were no longer the fashion or little push button phones that they could pick up and talk into for hours.  "Hello?  Hello?  Yes, this is So-and-so" or "Hold on just a minute please.  Let me see if I can find him/her (presumably Mommy or Daddy)." 

My parents did not forbid us to answer the phone, but there was a hierarchy to the phone tower.  Mom and Dad on the top, kids on the bottom.  Don't answer if there were no adults at home because they had to "run up the street for a minute and you don't want anyone to know you are home alone, do you?"  We learned and we practiced.  We just answered, "Hello?"  But some of our friends were taught to answer, "So-and-so residence, who may I ask is calling?"  I always got a kick out of those kids.  They seemed so professional and formal, like they were Ricky Schroeder on Silver Spoons.  But they knew how to answer the phone and they got the job done.

By the time I was a teenager, my parents had to install a second line in the house for my sister and me so that, even with call waiting in the house, they'd actually get a chance to talk to someone and not find a message about an important call three hours later when one of us had finally finished talking to a BFF about who the heck knows what or whispering repeated sweet absolutely nothings into the waiting ear of a paramour.  We loved the phone.  The phone was the life line.  The phone was connection, communication, community, and it was direct.  You had to pick up the phone if you wanted to know who was on the other side because there was no call waiting and much less phone solicitation.  So other than teenaged prank callers or appointment confirmations, more than likely someone in the household wanted to talk to whomever was on the other end.

My kids aren't getting that practice.  When Lily was in kindergarten, she was given an assignment to call someone on the telephone as part of a monthly activity log.  I thought it would be fun for her to call up one of her classmates and talk to them about whatever it was they were doing at home and vice versa.  I prearranged the call time with her friend's mother and we all, on both sides, geared up for the momentous occasion.  The prep was as much for the adults as for the children.  Because dinner time, the time scheduled for the call, has now become prime time for solicitous phone calls, fundraising efforts, surveys, and other robocalls, we had to avoid those landmines.  At the appropriate time, the phone was to ring on one end and the child was supposed to answer with a greeting, the other would respond, and they'd get to chatting. 

And so it went.  The caller nervously dialed the phone number and started talking into the receiver before the call had even connected.  "Let's try again.  You have to wait for the call to connect, hon.  Listen for the tone, dial, hear it ring and wait for someone to pick up." 

"Hello?" someone answered shyly on the other end and *click,* our caller had gotten nervous and hung up.  We tried again.  Phone rings and Lily answers in a near whisper, "Hello?"  Silence.  "Hello?"

"Hi."
"Hi."
"It's me from your class."
"I know that."
"I am calling you."
"I know that."
"OK, bye."
*click*

Not much has changed since that exchange because, frankly, the kids don't get much opportunity to set up their own play dates and are too young to gab it up on the phone with their friends.  Long before they've gotten off the bus, I've texted, emailed, maybe called, possibly seen the others' parent(s) and made the arrangements myself.  I don't have the girls answer the phone when it rings because the caller ID tells us who it is and gives me the chance to decide whether or not I want contact with the outside world. The lurking danger of someone, anyone assuming that my children are home alone, a learned paranoia from my childhood, has stopped me from having them pick up (I mean, why would a child answer the phone in the middle of the afternoon?), as well as the fear of all the info they might divulge when prompted. (Oh, yeah, my mom is here.  She is in the bathroom and waved her hands for me not to tell you that.  She's so silly.)

Mine are still small and I have heard from their contemporaries' parents that theirs also don't get much phone time.  My oldest had a friend/classmate who would frequently make her own robocalls using the school directory and reach out to every person in her class she might like to play with until someone finally answered and said yes.  Thanks to caller ID, I would see the name come up and expect the caller to be the parent of said little girl and would answer.  I regret to inform that I fell for this okey-doke far too many times.  On the other end there would be stammering, whispering, and the question, "Can Lily and I have a playdate?"  Depending on how quickly I recovered she'd either offer thanks and hang up, offer thanks and scream to her mother across the house that she'd connected and what time could they get together, or offer disappointment and ask me to call her back another time when Lily might be able to play!  I should call her back?

Talking to this little girl on the phone made me batty, but I admired her gumption, and though I was not sure if her parents were intentionally teaching her the ropes of phone communique, I appreciated the effort, even remarked to a friend that in a time of crisis I'd hoped that Lily would stick with that one because she knew how to get her point across, wasn't afraid of adults, and would figure out the path to safety.  She had no shyness, no fear, and complete confidence. 

Thanks to FaceTime and SKYPE, my kids have the opportunity to talk to AND see my parents.  I imaged the conversations would be easier since they are able to see them, almost like in a real conversation.  Not so.  They talk on FaceTime much like they do on the phone.  In monosyllables, blips, blurps, and beeps.  If they do indeed find something they like to talk about, they do so in a whisper.  I can see their mouths moving, am even sitting right next to them, but can barely hear a word they are saying.  My parents smile at them and nod, occasionally saying, "That's wonderful, " even when the girls are saying that the guppies in class have died.  Everyone is just thrilled to see each other.  I suppose the real talking will come later.

Or maybe not.  Do people even talk on the phone anymore?  So many people have just their smartphones, having said goodbye to landlines long ago.  There is texting, emailing, FaceTiming, Skyping.  It seems that long gone are the days of chatting up a storm or falling asleep on one end of the phone while your best friend does the same on the other.  And yet, to me, the lessons learned on the phone, communicating when you have to rely on the words, the tone, the pauses, the cracks, the muffled sound of crying, giggling, listening, paying attention, considering appear to be less important.  I am guilty too of preferring a text to a call, an email to a long drawn out explanation of what and where and when and how.  But when I need comfort, human contact (yes, the phone now represents human contact!) I reach for the phone and if I am able, I settle in for a delicious conversation with a friend who will calm my soul, reassure me, reinvigorate me, set me back on course.  And when I say settle in I mean walk around the house doing dishes, folding laundry, general cleaning, and checking texts on my cell while talking.  But that "hello," that "what's up?", that "I'm here," is worth a thousand :-) or LOLs or :-/.  Somehow I feel that we are together.

Sharing yourself can be challenging.  Being vulnerable, nervous, afraid, reaching out and admitting the need to connect can be embarrassing especially now that even in highly emotional states we can emoticon and air quote and asterisk our feelings in text.  But we need each other, might need to make the call, might need to receive one.  So we soldier on, the girls and me, one *click*, one hang up, one awkward silence at a time until talking to one another, sharing with one another, listening to one another is easy.



(c)  Copyrighted 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.