One of the side effects of relentless communication is phantom phone calls. During the recent holiday school break, my friend with younger children at home must have had her hands full. Two times in the same day my cell rang and the screen indicated her number was calling, but no one was there. I could hear a lot of activity on her end; unfortunately none of it included me. In the past, Husband’s phone has called mine while he’s driving home in his car unaware of the conversation he’s missing out on. Every time this happens I yell HELLO! as loud as I can but no one cares.
The theme for advertising this past Christmas was the new generation of iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, Nexus One, you name it. Very shortly, it will be impossible to buy a cell phone that just makes phone calls. A friend of mine who is a longtime attorney just outfitted his New York office with webcams so he can run things from his out-of-state vacation home this winter. Although it’s an experiment for now, he’s looking toward the future and that’s never a bad move. With technology always on the rise and the economy circling the drain, business as usual is anything but usual. Shortly after we spoke, I watched the powerful Coen brothers movie No Country For Old Men. I’ve seen it before, but my favorite piece of dialogue remains the same.
“What are you doing?”
“Just looking for what’s coming next.”
“Yeah. Problem is you never see it.”
In the morning newspaper, the comic strip Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman struck a familiar chord.
It reminded me of a story told by another friend, this one with a grown son who just became a psychiatrist. Last year during his hospital rotation, my friend’s phone rang and she saw that it was her son’s cell number. She greeted him, but when he didn’t respond she realized he was speaking instead to someone in the room with him. She called out, “Hang up the phone!”
She then heard her son the doctor ask his patient how the new medication was working. The patient said he was feeling okay. Not wanting to eavesdrop, my friend hung up. But a few moments later her phone rang again, once more accidentally redialed. And once again she called out to alert her son. Suddenly the patient yelled, “They’re back! The voices are back!” With great interest, the doctor asked if he could discern what the voices were saying. The patient called out excitedly, “Yes! They’re saying, THIS IS YOUR MOTHER TELLING YOU TO HANG UP THE PHONE!”
My pal Blondie sent these photos along to remind us of Retro Before Robo
