Those Phones Were Much Smarter
Phoning someone is always impertinent. There is nothing more unpleasant than receiving a call. Only someone who really hates us can do something as terrible as taking a phone out of their pocket, cruelly pressing our name, and trying to communicate with us. Undoubtedly, of all the discomforts of modern life, the cell phone is the most painful and widespread.
Let these lines serve as a tribute to the old telephone and as the founding act of the Return to the Corded Telephone Foundation.
The possibility of being reachable at all times has given way to being obliged to be located. Not even instant messaging, concise and effective, has been able to appease the cravings of a few nags, who need to call at all costs without caring in the least if you are sleeping, giving a speech, or at your pet’s funeral.
Our wise ancestors invented a telephone attached to a wire. This prevented the sender from attacking the receiver no matter where they may be. Thus, telephone violence was reduced to the home, the office, or wherever there was one of these devices, greatly minimizing the risk of being struck by the telephone. To be effective, it was essential that the receiver was also in the vicinity of another telephone, and that the caller was aware of said location.
Now that was a smartphone! If you were not available, it exhausted the sender’s patience with boring tones, giving him little hope with an energetic answering machine. When you were talking to someone else, it conveyed that you were “engaged” with a distinctive sound that did nothing to encourage a repeat call via the more modern and probably unconstitutional “call on hold.”
The telephone of yesteryear, when it rang, did not emit Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina, but simply went “ring.” Austere, impertinent, and impossible to silence, which is what you’d expect from an alarm. But then again, those lovely black circular-dialed specimens made the call a solemn, handcrafted rite. Most of the time you would mix up one digit or another and chat for a while with a stranger, forgetting what you were going to communicate in the original call and desisting from bothering the intended receiver. The cable also avoided that stupid ritual question we now ask almost every time we call: “Where are you?”
The regression to the cordless telephone has ruined everything we had achieved in previous centuries, taking us back to the quality of life of the 23rd or 24th century. If Graham Bell or Meucci were to raise their heads, they would be horrified to see the indiscriminate use we make today of their telephone ingenuity, once devised, I suppose, for military purposes to torture prisoners of war.
No call is ever received with joy, except that of God in the last hours of life. However, not all of them are equally uncomfortable. Bosses are always a nuisance. With e-mail, e-commerce, and the electric chair, no boss should ever have to make a phone call. Unfortunately, this gadget has allowed the boss to stretch the lazy employee whip to any time and any place. And, of course, a boss rarely calls to raise your salary or give you a vacation. And if he does today, tomorrow he’ll claim he was under the influence of the cannibal drug.
Even more dangerous are calls from old friends. Old friends aren’t really friends, and they don’t quite get over the fact that they’re old. They call you with that insolent closeness as if two hours have passed since the last time, and they do it on a Saturday at dawn, to remind you that you have a bender pending. You can’t hang up on them because that would make them even more nervous, and they might show up at your house with a bottle of whiskey and a whole troop of raggedy, retro-trashing city slickers. With this kind of friend, the best thing to do is a “see you tomorrow.” Every day.
Many times we wish we didn’t answer. At the beach, when you’re about to forget the name of your company’s human resources manager and your mind wanders to landscapes that look like Windows 95 screensavers, you’re justified in dodging a call any way you can. My advice is to use duct tape to tape your cell phone to the back of an adult crab. But make sure it’s an adult, or you’ll get a hefty bill from Candy Crush, which infant crabs love.
In the end, the quickest way not to take a call is to immediately put the fingers of both hands in your mouth and bite down hard until it stops ringing. Another way to avoid them, although more expensive, is to throw the cell phone into a gutter, out of the window, or quickly put it in the soup. This also gives the noodles a coating, something that is always appreciated, so they can call their uncle the macaroni and share recipes for flavor enhancers.
Another way not to pick up is to hang up. If you have a cell phone with buttons, you do it by pressing any red button. If you have one of those tactile gadgets, you slide your finger to draw an infinity sign on the screen, close your fingers as if you were picking up a handful of the screen, and then shoot it repeatedly with a Magnum 45 until you are unable to distinguish the phone from the ashtray. This last technique is called a missed call.
And, oh dear, I have to leave you, my cell phone is ringing.
“My dearest boss! Where are you? It’s always nice to receive such a pleasant surprise on the phone. You know you can call me anytime. When your call rings I feel as if Tchaikovsky’s Solemn Overture 1812 is emanating from my heart. By the way, what about my raise?”
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