Chatterbox

While nothing in terms of inventions from the past couple centuries can really compare to the first telephone, I've never really taken to the device. Recently, the term "phone" has come to refer more to mobile devices than the landlines that were once so prevalent throughout American homes, but still the notion of talking into a plastic handset, big or small, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In this day and age, I'm more inclined to use the text message to communicate. Some people say it's impersonal and others toss it off as only speciously more convenient, but I prefer it. A handful of letters, a quick tap of a button, and my part's done. What puzzles me is the insistence I get from other people, the ones who swear by conversation, that the lengthy interaction the way to go. Maybe it's just because I like my alone time to be distraction-free, but also, holding a little plastic handset up to the side of my face has never gotten me anything but a headache.

Take my friend Michael, for example. When we were in high school, he and I would talk on the phone several nights a week, although really I guess phrasing it that way is sort of misleading. He would talk, and I would sit there listening. Usually our conversations would start out about simple things like computer games and then we'd turn to school. Homework assignments and the like. But shortly after we'd exhausted everything about when the latest science paper was due, the topic would veer off into what I considered a more banal territory. Namely, World War II.

I have nothing against the Second World War, and neither do I have anything against my friend for being so interested in it. What I do have against the topic is being held prisoner to hearing about it for nearly two hours. Worse still is the feeling of being trapped, and it would never fail that, in the middle of a story about storming the beaches of Normandy, I would have to pee.

My friend Michael is an excelling history buff, and if I were ever to find myself on a game show, stumped on a question about the Panama canal, Michael would be the person I call. That, in my mind, is an example of a good time to talk about history, not so much when when bedtime is looming and you've waited until the last minute to write a paper on the aspects of innocence in Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. I'd sit there, listening to details of battles fought and the life line of the Panzer tank until the sun was just a distant memory, like my free evening: gone.

Growing up, the telephone was a common element in our household, as if my parents had hired an interior decorated with secret ties to Southwestern Bell. Not only was there one in nearly every room of the house, but it seemed to be a permanent fixture for my mother's ear. As the operator of an in-home daycare, my mother never really had the opportunity to escape our house. The monotony of my mother's weekdays was broken by her little cabal of friends, regular talking buddies who would call and chat for hours on end. In essence, the telephone afforded her what books offered me: a means of leaving this place behind. I'd come home from school and find her sitting at our dining room table, leaning back in one of the chairs with one hand running through the slightly harried waves of her brown hair, the other cradling the black plastic brick of our cordless phone.

I often wondered, How on earth can you enjoy that?

I suppose my initial dislike for telephony stems, like with all things, from when I was young. In the third grade, I was the unfortunate object of a crush from one of my classmates. Not that having someone doting on me was a bad thing, it was just that this person was a girl; and if there's one thing I've learned in my time alive, it's that girls are complex, scary creatures. This particular girl's name was Melissa, and although we shared a great many interests, talking over a landline was not one of them. I'm not entirely sure how she set her sights on me (maybe it was the proximity of our two desks, or maybe it was the universe's cruel idea of a joke) but regardless, one evening while I was sitting at home, our phone rang.

It was nothing unusual for my mother to get a call, and so the little electronic laugh of our kitchen line often disappeared among the more engaging aspects of my home life: the sounds of a tiny red-suited plumber jumping over chasms, say, or the latest efforts to thwart global destruction by the ethnically-diverse Power Rangers. But when my mother called for me, I looked up at her with something akin to alarm. Who could be calling me? I wondered. It certainly wasn't one of my numerous friends, seeing as I could count them on one hand run over by a lawnmower. When I took the receiver from her, it felt heavy in my hand. The phone, to me, was one of those adult objects, like a butcher knife, something kids weren't supposed to play with. Having had no real experience with the phone aside from picking up the receiver and being mistaken for my mother, I spoke into it, reluctant, cautious, as if the person on the other end might respond with, "No, I'm sorry, I was looking for Michael. Your son."

The voice on the other end was familiar, and soon I placed it as Melissa's. At school we'd talked a fair amount, but never about anything substantial. We'd never shared our opinions on pressing matters of the day, like the quality of the lunch meals in the cafeteria, or whether or not it was time for the school to get a new jungle gym. Our conversation waned early on, and for the most part I cannot recall what we even talked about. But when we eventually hung up, all I knew was that this had marked the end of an era: the time when I would be left alone.

Melissa's calls became more frequent over the next couple weeks, but still their substance was lacking, and I often found myself wandering off to think about other things while she talked about the art project she drew for Mrs. Brown, the school art teacher, or the grade she got on a multiplication test. It came to the point where i dreaded the ringing of the phone. I suppose it would have been simple just to ask my mother to intervene, but that seemed rude, and if there was something more distasteful than the thought of getting back on the telephone, it was certainly being rude. Near the end of our time talking, Melissa would call and we'd just sit there for ten minutes. Neither of us would say anything, and I'd listen to the hiss of empty phone line, playing a waiting game that I wasn't entirely sure I would win.

Ultimately the phone calls came to an end when, in the middle of a stretch of silence, I announced into the speaker, "Look, Melissa, if you don't have anything to say, then why do you keep calling me?" I was in my parents' bedroom with my mother while she folded clothes, and she gave me a look that was equal parts shock and understanding. Melissa's response was calm and, looking back, maybe even a little calculated; "I know you're angry," she replied, and I had to wonder what the point of calling someone to not say a word could be. Still, immediately after hearing her response, I felt like a bully. It's not much of a surprise, but our phone calls stopped after that.

To this day I'm reluctant to get on the phone. While friends of mine will make mention of long conversations with new boyfriends or girlfriends, my experience with the telephone has taught me to be cautious. And while my friends pick up their mobiles, answering those little bricks of constant connectivity, I'll pause and think, as if it's reflex, What will you do if you have to pee?