Phones

Ok, so I've mentioned my aversion to telephones and now I should probably answer the question, eh?

When I was a kid my parents used to make me call to make doctor and dentist appointments, get information on classes (that I'd never get to take) etc. I was so terrified that I'd make myself a script to read and then notate and fill in the lines where the receiving person would respond. I'd do this with friends too as a teenagers, especially boys. The script helped, but to this day, I'd still rather not initiate phone calls.

As an adult, I worked at a call center for a bank's division of credit fielding angry calls from customers about their credit cards. Headphones that streamed calls in non-stop. If I turned it off for a moment, my time card was docked. There were ways around this, but really it was 200+ calls in 8 hours. Oh, with the mirror in 1/4 cubical so we could make sure we smiled while conversing with the "customer". I lasted about 4 months until another job offer came in. I can't believe I lasted that long, but the pay was ok and the benefits were good. Still, soured the whole phone thing for me even more.

Then we went wireless at home. Cell phones = dollars per minute. No problem, until my new job required a lot of phone based networking on my own time. For some reason I really enjoyed that. It was mostly talking old houses and preservation stuff, so I was in my groove when the calls came in. Generally, I did not make calls.

Suddenly, I was this mom who loved to talk on the phone. I mean I was really in love with it. I talked on the phone with friends multiple times a day despite the fact that I saw them a good portion of every day. I was on the phone with someone, work or not, almost 10 hours a day. Seriously. You know the moms who chat on their cell phones while pushing their kids on swings at the park? That was me. One day Lil'Bug, at 9 months old, started holding things up to her ear and babbling into the pretend phone and then turning away from me when I tried to play with her. Message received.

The thought of talking on the phone while trying to care for my family and home just took on a whole new feeling for me. I resigned from many things and scaled back a lot, almost to nothing.

So, the effects of this are pretty evident. I work and network mostly through email, but not everybody does or even checks email daily so sometimes I miss out. Some people get really offended when I email them back after they've left me a phone message. There is also a level of intimacy that people gain chatting on the phone, but for me I get distracted and feel like I'm not giving my all. So, I make due with the technology that suits me best when I have time to attend to it. I also blog so I don't end up repeating the same stories about our day to the many long distance relatives who do call. We all still get to be connected and they even have said they like the almost daily log with pictures better! :)