Telephone Lines

No one wants to talk to me on the phone. I am abrupt and dismissive and always trying to hang up. I blame this on the fact that I was raised in a household full of boys and the telephone was no big deal. It was very uncool to chat on the phone. We had a black kitchen phone with a long cord which would reach into our coat closet if someone important was calling (aka a boy) and one needed to be out of earshot of the siblings. But there was still a lot of teasing, and talking on the phone was dismissed as a lame way to spend one’s time. Around this time some of my friends had a completely different attitude about the phone. They had actually mastered the give and take banter and their parents were indulging them with their own blue princess phones in their bedrooms and dedicated lines for the kids in the household. The only calling that was encouraged by my brothers was our repertoire of crank calls which we did in the afternoons while polishing off a bag of barbecue chips.

Fast forward all these years, and I would much rather write a five-page letter than spend a few minutes on the phone. I have been thinking about chain letters that would arrive in the mail, in days gone by. A letter would arrive in the mail and one would have seven days to mail out seven lengthy scripted handwritten letters with the assurance that in a month’s time our mailbox would be flooded with fascinating life-changing correspondence. If the chain was broken, one was to encounter a string of bad luck so no way would I chance that. But some teenagers out there must have been throwing caution to the wind because chain letters were broken left and right, and I never received that plethora of mail promised. Looking back, while I was fulfilling my obligations to chain letters, friends across town were tossing them in the garbage. Instead, they chose to study their Latin declensions thus making wise investments in their future while I was absorbed in curlicue letters and heart shaped periods, allowing my homework to lie fallow, undone.

One would be hard pressed to refer to our local birds as fallow, but their communication this time of year has gone the way of chain letters. The birds are out there, but they have nothing to say and are not calling attention to themselves as we hike on by. Sometimes we spot one on a branch just watching the world pass by or up on a telephone wire as a great vantage point. As we trudge along in the quiet, we think about all the bird songs that filled the air in the spring and wonder just how many of these we will be able to remember once the singing starts again. Every year at this time I say I will spend the cold winter months listening to recordings of bird songs and expanding my repertoire. But time has a way of rushing by, and many of the things I say I will do remain undone. But just maybe this will be my year, and I can make those Smith sisters who taught me all about birds as a child proud.