Monday ‘Musement

Once upon a time, a phone was stuck to a wall usually in a kitchen or in a hallway, and we had to get out of our chair or stop whatever else we were doing and go to the phone to answer it, and then we talked to whoever was on the other end of the line.  Then somebody thought it would be nice to have the phone sit on the kitchen counter, and make them in decorator colors – never mind the water and whatever else in the kitchen might get into the phone – but we still went to it and talked to whoever was on the line.  Then we added phones in other rooms, bedrooms, living rooms, dens, and we didn’t have to go so far to answer.  Then there was the phone in the car, and we could phone home and let folks know when we were running late, or check to see what we needed to pick up at the grocery store before we got home.  The telephone world became more and more mobile.  But we still talked on it.

Then came the first cellular phones and gradually they shrank, and had a display screen so one could know who was calling, and then somebody thought it would be cool to use the alphabet on the phone pad to send messages, and one could know that even if the recipient wasn’t right near their phone, eventually they would get the message.  When that became cumbersome, somebody put a typewriter pad on a phone, and ‘texting’ became much, much easier.  And we no longer had to talk on the phone.  Actually I’m not sure why they’re called phones anymore, because we hardly have to ‘phone’ anybody, we just ‘text’ them.  It’s an interesting world we live in, and just writing this makes me realize how the world has changed in my lifetime.  Just imagine how much it has changed for those people, like my aunts, who were alive before there were telephones in every household.

I remember being in my aunt’s farmhouse kitchen, and the phone rang –

2 long, 2 short – and they knew the neighbor on the next farm was getting a call.  They even had an answering service – just call the next farm and say they had to be out for a few hours, would somebody answer their calls.

Now our phones go with us everywhere, we talk and text and take pictures and send them and surf the ‘net and mark our calendars and leave ourselves memos and play games and keep up with our social network and calculate the unit cost of an item and check the weather.  They don’t even have to ring any more, just vibrate in our pocket, and nobody in the movie theater knows that we’re being called messaged (there’s even a new lingo).

A little while ago, we were in a restaurant, sitting just across from a young couple, both of them on their phones, not talking.  I wondered if they were messaging each other, just like some of those commercials we’ve seen.

The following was posted by a friend on FB this morning:

It is a new world, sometimes I’m not sure I really like it, but it does make me laugh!

And talking of sending pictures on phones, got this one on mine just yesterday:

A future quilter – my niece learning how to use a sewing machine!

Happy networking!              Blessings, Peg