“I’ll get it!”
“Hello. Stockdale’s. This is Kristen speaking.”
“Yes, she is. Hang on just a second.”
“Mom! Telephone!”
Curling the cord around my fingers, I would talk to my friends about the latest school gossip or our weekend sleepover. A call for me came as a special treat, regular or seldom.
It was typically required that any calls for my sister and I be taken in the living room. We were not allowed to disappear with the cordless handheld phone very often unless it pertained to a school project or something quick. The intrusion of family members into our phone conversations was commonplace and accepted -expected. “Sis. It’s time to hang up the phone,” was a guardian I could not see at the time.
According to Once Upon a Telephone, “The home was a communal invention from the outset. When the telephone rang, friends and family gathered around mesmerized by its magic flow of electrons as they would later be by the radio.”
During the 19th century and mid-20th, callers relied upon a switchboard operator who knew their customers’ voices. Neighbors shared party lines. Pary lines were multiple families or individuals using the same phone line. It was standard to wait your turn. Thus, calling for participation and patience in each other’s lives. – and perhaps a bit of eavesdropping too.
In the early 1950s, people would pick up the receiver and wait for the operator to answer. In this way, they could connect with whom they wish. The operator was more like a friend than a switchboard employee.
“Furniture pieces were added for the phone to be placed and a chair for the speaker to sit in. Even as people defied time and space by speaking with someone miles away, they were firmly planted in their homes, where the phone was attached to the wall.” The Atlantic by Julia Cho
Most of us cannot remember the early years of the telephone or party lines. By the same token, I have many readers who can.
My recollections begin with phonebooks. It worked like a road map for the community, offering a name, address, and phone number of whom you wished to contact. Landlines, answering machines, payphones, and phonebooths were all used when I was a little girl. I can remember my mother pulling over, searching for a quarter so she could give my father a call.
Even rotary phones were still around in my young years. I used to spin the phone dial around to hear the clicking made by the receiver.
Everyone, including myself, jumped at the invention of the cellphone! What a remarkable idea- having a phone handy everywhere you go!
I remember the day my dad came home so proud of the car phone he had just purchased. They were new on the scene and installed in the middle of the front floorboard or sat in a bag on the front seat. People only used them for emergencies or short calls because it was costly to make a call.
We look at cell phones as the marker of disconnection for the family, but actually, there was a more subtle disconnect beginning with the onset of the cordless phone. It came in under the radar, and no one saw it as fatal to the home. We saw it as freedom! Now we were able to multitask while talking effortlessly. Where we once gathered in the same room to hear the phone call, now we could get off by ourselves privately.
The phone no longer occupied the family location but private thoughts and time.
Nowadays, we have phones that we carry around in our pockets. It is more than a phone. It is our life. It contains everything that we need to function, or so we think—our personal connections, social media, entertainment, information, maps, GPS tracking, planners, and even our wallets. Everything we need is just a click away.
Personal cell phones allow us to be anywhere but in our created haven. The elusive air becomes more attractive than the home we have decorated.
Phone calls once captivated the room, with those in it catching snippets of the conversation. Now emails and texts, pictures, and videos can pass through one’s personal device without any recollection of who is around; what’s worse, we don’t care.
People we rarely see or deem as acquaintances become the main attraction rather than the one sitting right beside us.
“In the early part of the new millennium, Americans proudly announced, ‘We don’t even have a landline anymore.’ “But this came with a quieter, secondary loss- the loss of the shared social space of the family landline.” – Julia Cho
I am old-fashioned at best. Although, I enjoy technology (I am connecting to you right now). We must set limits. I am still the one in the grocery store with a paper list and pen in hand. Eva has her list right next to me. And Charlotte, well. She likes my pen. Both of my girls are not just beside me; they are with me. They are watching me-copying me. For better or worse, catching lines like, “Stop that.” “Put that down!” “No, we are not getting that today.”
Cell phones are not going anywhere, but we must harness the activity. Our children will repeat what they see us doing. Resentment can slip in where I prefer a screen over interaction with their thoughts and cares. In a split second, the moment is gone.
What a sad day when we can’t make eye contact with our children and our conversation turns into pacified “grunts and uh-huhs” while they are busy on the party line we never set limits to.
I understand that distractions and intrusions come in all forms and that our children must learn to handle the onset of such interruptions; this is part of valuable training in proper manners. But are we asking them to wait for selfish reasons? Have we created a new party line? One they can’t ever get a call through.
Even in the infancy of the new telephone phenomenon, there were questions about this intrusion of privacy into our homes. The “sanctity of the domestic hearth.”
The Atlantic
Each generation will face encroachment on their privacy. You must set parameters. Restrictions. A newspaper is informing, but when it shades the happenings within our home, limitations are regulated.
I have a childhood friend, whom I grew up with, Ashley Brewer. We were country girls; mud boots, tractors, and stock dams were as normal to us as paved streets and sirens to others. Her dad was a cattle rancher and farmer- growing corn and wheat. My father was a preacher and a cowboy- training horses, but both fathers were raising kids within the shelter of simplistic means.
We were in the fifth grade sitting at our desks talking, like girls do, before the bell rang. We told of our futuristic plans for when we were “grown-ups.” Ashley said, “I will never leave this place. I love my life here.” She never did.
Ashley and her husband raise their kids with the same values we shared as young girls. Albeit their kids are older than mine, I love what she said about the use of screens.
“We set limits on our devices, and my children must use them within the living room or where we can see them. This can be hard to do raising teenagers. We try to set realistic restrictions and stick by them.” “They consider me a mean mom. And I am ok with that.”
They don’t know it yet, but they will thank her one day.
A steal basket on my oak-stained hallway table is filled with classic historical books. Opposite them rests a white doily with an antique black rotary phone positioned upon it. I strategically placed a candy dish next to it. A tall skinny table lamp gives a soft glow to the table. Moreover, it silently invites people to take a sugary treat from it’s grasp. Quite often, a conversation is sparked by the timeless telephone.
It is a shining reminder to my family that we must define the borders of our home. Without it, anyone or anything will invade our sacred hearth.
The old rotary phone doesn’t ring anymore; it’s not connected. But each evening, as my family gathers together, I can hear its silent ring.
Welcome Home
“…I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” Ephesians 4:1
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