When I was a kid, phones had mile-long curly cords that reached all over the house. If someone called when I was chatting with my best friend Mary that lived up the street, they got a busy signal and had to call back later. I had to get up to change the station on my television, and then adjust the large antennae on the set's back.
So goes the story.
In the future, when my daughter is forty and talking to her granddaughters, she may say, "When I was a kid, we had phones inside the house, not just the cell phones we carry around in our pocket. Oh, and these things called televisions, too, that you hung up on the wall so you could watch your favorite shows."
Seems the popularity of the land line phone is going the way of technological Heaven, much like Atari. One day in the distant future, people may no longer own a land line.
I won't be one of them. I just can't give up that phone line.
Pew Research Center conducted a nationwide survey for their Social and Demographic Trends project and found 62% of Americans believe a land line is a necessity in life, down from 68% last year. Of course, that's us older people who grew up with a phone in the house.
Among the youngsters, only 48% of those aged 18-29 believe a land line is necessary.
I have friends who have given up the home phones in favor of the cell. I suppose I understand their point. They save money and the phone is always with them.
Me, I'm not a cell phone person. I have one, and I use it from time to time, but most days I forget to turn it on or make sure it's charged. I don't check voicemail regularly, which results in a lot of missed calls, and I find it difficult to drive a car/grocery shop/choose books at the library/order coffee at my local coffee shop and do a number of other things while attempting to hold down a conversation.
Television sets may be on the outs as well. Those younger people that said they didn't need a home phone? Only 29% believe a television set is a necessity.
Technology is changing the way we live and communicate. Soon, we'll do it all through a little piece of plastic that we carry around in a protective sleeve on our belt. We'll watch movies, read books, talk to our friends, and catch the latest episode of Two and a Half Men on our cell phones.
Or they will.
Perhaps I'm hanging on to the days when I walked to school through a blizzard. Times were simpler then, or so we tend to think. People couldn't find you when you left the house, because they had no way to call you and track you down. If you forget to ask your husband if he needed anything from the store before you left home, he was out of luck, as you didn't have a cell phone to call home and ask. Imagine the lists people must have made! You visited the library if you wanted to read a book. You searched for it on little pieces of alphabetized index cards, and if it wasn't there when you went to locate it on the racks, you just had to wait.
Me, I'm sticking with my regular big screen television and my land line. I'll read torn and tattered paperbacks that smell like heaven long before I hold a mechanical device in my hand. I'll be the rebel sitting around the house without a cell phone, playing endless rounds of Donkey Kong on my Nintendo.
Anyone with me?
