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Copyright Jan Watts 2003

By Jan Watts

I grew up in an era of black telephones that plugged into the wall and unless you had a very long extension cord, you didn't get more than 10 feet away.

They had a circular dial and you stuck your finger in the hole and pulled the number around until it hit a little silver bar on the phone. Most telephone numbers started with a couple of letters and five numbers. One of my phone numbers was ED 37617 which stood for EDGEWOOD. Later, on the ED was changed to numbers because so many people had phones, there had to be more number combinations. I also had NO 53436 which stood for Normandy.

Most homes only had one phone and it was usually in the kitchen area. There was no call waiting, call forwarding, three way calling or answering machines.

If you called someone and they were talking on the phone, you got a busy signal. People would actually leave their houses to go to work, church and shopping without worrying about missing a phone call. Then came the little princess phone that the phone company provided. It was cute and came in lots of colors. Then the phone company decided that you should buy your own phone and they would just provide the service. Then came answering machines. Everybody that was anybody had an answering machine. Not just doctors and lawyers.

Not long after that, the battery operated phone came along that you could pick up and walk outside in your yard and talk. My goodness, we shouldn't go out and enjoy our yard without being able to answer those pesky telemarketers!

Does anybody remember pagers? Those little gadgets that we clipped to our waist so important people could be disturbed during their lunch hour or dinner out with the family? It use to be only doctors had them, and then people who were in emergency service repairs like plumbers. The little things would go off and we'd go running to the nearest pay phone to answer them.

My first one was a voice pager. You would hear someone's voice coming out of the side of your body or your purse. My office would leave these long messages that sounded like "mab eilseln googleism en totamel melville call first". It would always cut off before they could rattle off the phone number you needed and of course, you didn't have a pen in your hand so you couldn't have written it down anyway.

So you made two phone calls for a quarter each. One to the person who left the message, usually my office to get them to repeat the name and number slowly after I found a pen and then to the person who called for me.

My kids loved those talking pagers. They would wait until they knew I was sitting in a nice restaurant for a business lunch and yell, "help, get me out of here!"

That brings us to cell phones. What can I say about cell phones? Again, I think they were designed so we could reach doctors in emergencies or we could call for a tow truck if we were broke down on the highway. The first cell phones were truly car phones. You had to have holes bored into your car and an antenna attached to use them. I argued with the salesman that kept trying to sell me one that I drove several different cars and I didn't know which one I wanted a phone in. He thought I should put one in each of the cars so that argument didn't work with him. I really didn't like the idea of boring holes in my cars.

That brings us to the cell phone today. They are no longer for doctors or the very elite and very important. Almost everyone over 10 is walking around with a cell phone. They are almost like another appendage on the human body. They are clipped on our belts or held in our hand or up to our ear. No one goes anywhere without their cell phone. Why is that? What is so important that we can't wait until we get through the drive-thru window placing our lunch order or finish eating a meal with a friend before answering the phone for another friend? It's called etiquette. When you are standing in line at the grocery store, you don't need to be talking to a friend about what movie to go see.

When you are out with one friend, you can wait till you get home to talk to another friend. Or at least til you get back in your car driving home.

My friends think I'm strange because I actually leave my phone in the car when I go inside a building for a meeting. I refuse to answer my phone when I'm having lunch with a business associate. I don't carry my phone into the grocery store while I'm buying groceries. I don't walk through Wal-Mart talking on the phone. I sure don't take it into church with me and I turn it off while I'm taping my TV or radio show or emceeing a concert.

I was sponsoring a talent workshop one weekend and the speaker stopped to answer his cell phone. That's a big no no. If you are addressing a group of people, you don't stop to answer your cell phone. I was taking a night class last year and the teacher stopped and answered her cell phone. If I'm in church and the pastor stops preaching to answer his cell phone, it better be God on the other end!

Cell phones have become a big nuisance. I don't think every 12 year old needs a cell phone. I don't want to hear four people having a conversation on a cell phone while I'm trying to eat dinner. I sure don't want someone to run a red light because they were talking on a cell phone.

My address book isn't big enough to write all the numbers to reach one person. My husband has two phone lines at his office, a fax line, company email, home email, a pager, a company cell phone, a home phone, a home fax line and a personal cell phone. That's just way too much. Maybe we should go back to the old black phones that the phone company provided. I dare you to leave your cell phone home the next time you go out! Try it, you might like it.

Got to go, I think I hear my cell phone ringing!

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