Direct Line

Hi,
What do you do when you want to talk to someone who is not within yelling distance? You phone.

Originally we kept our telephones in the main hall of the house, on a pedestal. Why? Because we were used to grreating guests at the front door, so we treated phone calls like guests walking in the front door. Sounds silly, but that is where everyone had their phones installed... It also was easier to just run the phone wire into the front of the house. Walls were lathe & plaster, no drywall, so running the phone line through the wall wasn't possible and you had to secure them along the top or bottom of the walls. Hiding phone lines was a major decorating issue for the wealthy, and no one but the rich could afford the luxury of the telephone.

Fast forward to 2012 where we carry our phone in our pocket and it connects us to the whole world at the tough of a finger and a series of 10 numbers gets us to anyone we want to talk to. The only thing we have to remember is what time zone the person we want to speak with is in versus the one we are in so that we're not waking up a poor soul. Phones will even keep track of that info for you if you want. It's fool proof.

What if the person we want to reach has no phone? Yes, there are still people on this planet without a phone, but very few of them and soon we will all be connected, every human with a heart beat, all 7 billion of us, give or take a few infants and some of the more senile geriatric set.

The one person I wanted to talk to today doesn't have a phone or a direct line, she's died. It's an odd feeling not to be able to pick up the phone and talk to her now. Not that I did it that often, but I always knew I could if I wanted to. Now that I can't call my mom, I feel the need to pick up the phone and hear her voice. Weird.

The telephone had evolved enormously in the last 100 years. Maybe in the next century we will even be able to reach the departed. Harry Houdini would have loved that!

xox

M