Telephone Trauma

The older I get and the more I recede into hermitage, the greater the distance grows between me and telephone usage. In my younger years—especially during my career—the telephone was an indispensable tool. I used it many times a day. It was my principal connection to the rest of the world, and since I was at the time fully a member of society, it was essential. This was back in the days before cell phones, when the thing you talked into had a cord attached to it and operated only over land lines.

Now I live in the woods—quite isolated from civilization, at least for ongoing face-to-face contact. What connection I have to society is now largely maintained through the internet or visits from friends. I rarely go out into the world—I invite friends from the world into my home. Thus the telephone is no longer a key tool for me. In fact, it has become increasingly intrusive, as robo-calls and undesired solicitors constantly pester us. Rather than welcoming the phone these days, I find it often serves as an apparatus for invading my solitude. We have learned that phone solicitors could not care less about any so-called ”Do Not Call Lists” which the government establishes. The intruders have many sleazy ways of keeping a step ahead of controls on their odious activities. They are just one more infuriating example of assaults on our privacy.

But there's another completely different way that I have experienced telephone trauma a couple of times, and it's caused by my not owning a cell phone (let alone one that might be called smart). What? No cell phone? Don't even vast numbers of people in poor countries use cell phones? I have chosen not to get one, because of my decision to live a solitary existence, and to exist on a land line. Besides, the internet provides me most of the services people acquire from their cell phones. Well, that is, except GPS—but I rarely go anywhere any more, so that is no inducement.

Yet I still do venture out on rare occasions—I've even found it necessary to fly a couple of times, during this last decade. Traveling without a cell phone can at times be rather traumatic, I have found. It is no problem for me when I am accompanied by a normal human who possesses a smart phone, but when I'm alone it can be very harrowing, because I've had to seek out a payphone a few times. Trying to locate a payphone these days while on the road is like wandering through the woods, hoping to spot a dodo.

My most traumatic telephone experience occurred several years ago, when I was traveling downstate, headed for a few days' visit with friends. I looked desperately for a payphone, to let them know what my arrival time would be. Mile after mile slipped by—the landscape utterly payphone-less. At last I spotted a booth! Pulling the car over, I stepped inside, to discover a vandalized, non-functioning telephone. I drove on, evermore desperate to call. Another phone booth! This one looked to be in good shape. I filled it with coins, dialed my friends, to hear Sue answer, only to find out that she couldn't hear me! I had a phone that would willingly send, but refused to receive.

These experiences have been enough either to cause me to buy a cell phone or stay home. I'm choosing the latter. There, my only telephone trauma is those damnable solicitors who invade my privacy. I have, however, a form of retaliation: I unplug the bloody machine, at those times that I treasure my solitude—which would be about 22 hours a day, if I didn't have to compromise with my wife.