Exam highlights failures of modern telephones

(Recently my grandson, Everett, accompanied me to get my eyes checked. I noticed through doctor-induced blurred eyes that he was talking on his cellphone with a foreclosure smile on his face.

When I returned home I fired up my commuter and the photo appeared and scared the devil out of me. He had taken my picture while talking to a friend and sent it soaring, in color, through thin air to my computer where it menacingly lurked just waiting to attack. Since that experience, I have re-thought my opinion of the modern telephone.)

Despite my advanced years I am a gadget nut. I am especially fond of electronic do-dads like the computer, video and digital cameras. I am impressed with how fast the technology of our world is changing.

Computers are faster, cameras are better, radio is clearer, and just about everything you plug in seems to be heading in the right direction with one exception.

To my way of thinking the telephone has passed its ability to be a time-saving device and recently, as you now know, I found it to be down right dangerous.

When I was a kid the telephone was a wonderful miracle. It hung on the wall and had a crank with a black handle on the right side. I remember well the times that I would turn the crank and hear a voice say “central” or “operator.”

It was then my turn to talk and I would say, “Mert, I am trying to find my mama, do you know where she might be?” Her answer was swift and sure, “She was over at Mrs. Starnes house a while ago. I’ll call for you or you can ring two longs and a short.”

That meant that I could turn the crank two long turns and one short and presto, there was Mrs. Starnes on the line-along with half the other people in town.

After they took the phone off the wall it sat on a cradle and had a place to dial the number; Mert was no longer needed.

Over time, the cellphone made its entrance and the telephonic world changed. It used to be a time of relaxation when a person left their house, or office, but now there is no place to hide.

It is a real experience to walk through an airport and see how many people have little phones growing out of their ears. The noise of the phone chirps sounds like a cricket convention down in a cypress swamp.

There are three main reasons I am fed up with the telephone:

I am sick and tired of having my dinner interrupted by some jerk wanting to sell me a cemetery plot that they know I will find beautiful and peaceful.

I am sick and tired of calling a business and having to listen to some computer go through the numerous options I have, i.e., “If you want this or that then punch number so and so.”

The list stretches on and on and when you finally figure out what to punch you will hear, “all of our representatives are busy helping other customers …”

Even Sandpoint has become infected with this because I called a place the other day that must hire at least two people and I had to go through the “punch” thing.

I miss the days when you called and talked to another human being. I miss the days when my time was important to someone else and I was not made to wade through the “punching” business.

I miss the days when I knew that the person I was calling was home if I got a busy signal and if no one answered it meant they were out. I also miss the days when there were no “speaker phone” and you could have an intimate conversation with one person at a time.

I almost forgot the third reason the telephone is far down on my list. It is no longer just a telephone.

It is a camera, a GPS (Global Positioning System), an entertainment center, etc. And it could be an implement used to send an unsuspecting grandpa off to the great beyond with a heart attack.