Slightly Off the Mark: Landlines Leave Lasting Legacy

Landlines Leave Lasting Legacy

I'm cutting the cord, so to speak. Unwiring, vaulting myself into the 21st Century, taking the leap--

Okay, I'm mostly doing it to save money ... I was perfectly happy being wired. I suppose someday soon the doctor will want me to cut out caffeine, and after that I won't be wired in any way at all.

I've been a hardliner all my life. I'm not trying to start an argument about politics--I mean telephones. You see (listen to this in a grumpy old man voice), when I was younger they didn't have them-there newfangled cellular phones.

Don't laugh. When your kids grow up, they'll make fun of you for not having a brain input port on the back of your neck.

But when I was a kid you couldn't even carry the phone over to your couch: Our phone was on the kitchen wall. Maybe the theory back then was that housewives could talk while cooking. We don't really have housewives anymore, either.

And it was a party line. I know, right? Just imagine.

Wait, you don't know what a party line is?

Well, we lived out in the country, and several homes around the area shared the same line. Before you made a call, you had to quietly pick up the receiver, to make sure someone wasn't already talking on it. If they were, you very quietly continued to listen for any good gossip.

So we didn't have a private line until I moved into town as a teen, and even then it was still screwed into the wall. It wasn't until I moved out on my own that I got a phone that was actually portable. And by portable, I mean it rested on a table, and had enough line coming from the wall that I could carry that heavy thing anywhere in my apartment.

You could use it to call a hospital, or send someone to the hospital.

Of course, my first apartment only had two rooms, if you include the bathroom. Still, a phone that heavy could be used to give burglars a concussion.

Back then you could actually get tired dialing. Why? Because dialing in the 80s often meant an actual dial. If you called a number with a lot of ones, no big deal. If you called 219-797-8998, you'd have cramps at the end.

Around that time somebody came up with the idea of a mobile phone you could have in your car. You had to pay attention to how much phone line you had left, or the car would come to an abrupt stop at the end of the reel.

Around 1990 we got our first cordless phone, a huge advancement, as long as you didn't stray far from the base. I remember standing outside (okay, five feet from the house), feeling strange that I could talk outside, at least until the neighbors complained. Cordless phones also encouraged exercise, by which I mean wandering around the house, trying to find it.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Then, in 2001: My first cell phone. Entirely portable! All you needed was a shoulder strap and a back brace to carry it. After that you could have real fun with your phone, like drop it in your drink, or talk while driving, or drop it in your drink while talking while driving. It was great to have a way to call for help if you crashed while talking and drinking.

But I kept my land line for twenty years after cell phones became a thing in my family. My initial argument was that if cell service went down, or a power outage led to drained batteries, we could still talk on a phone that used a separate line. But then, one day, I realized he only phone still hooked up was the cordless--which would stop working in a power outage, anyway.

By now the only calls I got on it were from people sitting in cubicles in India, asking about my extended warranty.

So as of now, although the number's still in the phone book (if they still make those), it no longer works. If you want to talk to me on the phone, you have to ask for my cell number. And I don't pick up there when there's no name on the incoming call, because apparently the FBI has a warrant out for me and doesn't use caller ID. Well, that's what the guy on the old phone said.

Or, you could e-mail me. But that's a whole other story.