Telephones

I like to think I'm open to new ideas and the use of new technology. I hum along using current technology, perfectly happy and rather smug that I've mastered new gizmos and the concurrent jargon when, WHAM, it's obsolete.

The shift-over starts insidiously enough. A few brave souls try out the new technology. It's usually clunky, not that efficient and prone to problems. More people jump on the bandwagon and the technology improves. Then it's like a switch gets flipped. One minute everyone is using the old ABC, the next, they're using the new XYZ. Think about the switch-overs of vinyl LPs to cassette tapes; cassette tapes to CDs; typewriters to word processors; VHS tapes to CDs/DVDs; dot matrix printers to laser; rooftop TV antennas to cable. The list is endless.

I'm not exactly sure when everyone else changed from using rotary dial telephones to push button touchtone phones. I only know that our family must have been one of the last holdouts for rotary phones.

It's not that we didn't embrace the touchtone. It's just that, being frugal, we didn't see a need to replace the perfectly serviceable black rotary dial phone we had in the kitchen. It had made the trek with us from the last two homes we'd lived in and was a comfortable, solid as a rock appliance. When we moved into our current home in the late eighties, touchtone phones were provided by the phone company for two telephone jacks. The black rotary was an extra that we put in the kitchen. We never gave it another thought.

One day, our youngest son had a friend over to play. We had invited him to stay for dinner and he needed to call home and ask for permission. Fine. We directed him to our kitchen phone. He picked up the receiver -- then silence. He put the receiver back down. I thought perhaps he'd forgotten his phone number.

With an embarrassed look, he said, "I don't know how to USE this."

He had never seen a rotary dial phone, let alone used one before.

It had never occurred to me that there was an entire generation of children growing up with no clue what "dialing" a telephone number really means.

The following Christmas, Santa gave us a new push button touchtone telephone for the kitchen.


p.s. These days, I wonder how many young people can read an analog "face" dial watch or if they can only read digital time.

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