The title has nothing to do with a risqué song by Chuck Berry, the father of Rock & Roll, but it will serve as a preface to the noisome offspring of Ma Bell. At about the age of seven, I was introduced to the telephone—a walnut box hanging on the wall of my father’s home office—and given strict orders to keep my sticky little hands off the tantalizing instrument.
In the folksy words of Carl Sandburg: Why did the kids put the beans in their ears when they were told not to put the beans in their ears? A question about the mysterious box had to be answered: How did a voice coming from the outside get into the receiver? Since we were on a party line, if the receiver was lifted carefully, it was possible to listen in on the neighbors’ conversation.
One time I heard a voice say: “I think someone is listening in.” The other voice said: “It’s probably that Firari-brat rubbering in.” Caught in the act. I hung up quickly. Years would pass before I decided that “rubbering” was short for “rubbernecking.” Nowadays everyone in range of a lout on a wireless is victimized by his loud, unsolicited chattering and forced into the role of a miserable rubbernecker.
You’ll notice that the cord attached to the receiver is probably about two feet in length, thereby preventing any walking around and sharing stupid ideas while talking in public. Quite a change from today. But more on that later.
To activate the wall phone, the receiver was lifted out of the hook switch. Next, the crank on the opposite side could be turned, one long ring bringing the switchboard operator online. I often wondered what the operator did between calls. Since she could make free calls, did she ring up Bolivia to see how the coffee beans were doing? She probably wore her hair up in a tight roll with a pencil stuck in the bun.
Near the top of the phone were two silver eyes, the bells, and under them the transmitter arm jotted out and ended with puckered black lips. For years afterward, I remembered the lesson taught by my parents: Any phone call that lasts more than two minutes is a crime against nature and worthy of a box on the ears.
I hope you can now understand why I was anti-Ma Bell for many years, yearning for the prairie days when serene smoke signals were sent up with a blanket waved over a fire: Dot.dot. Big war party tonight. Bring peace pipe and buffalo grass. I wondered how the message would read if the Indian stuttered?
Years later, when I returned to civilization, what a shock it was to discover that just about everybody was walking around with a cordless cell phone pressed to the ears. At first I thought they were all suffering from earache.
Cordless in Caza
Currently surrounded by a whole family of cell phone users, I react quite violently when one of those tiny plastic jobs is handed to me. You’ll have to forgive an irascible old man for trying to quell the urge to throw it out through the nearest window. No one listens when I yell: “My head is not built for this Lilliputian device. I don’t know where to listen and I don’t know where to talk, so please remove it from my presence before I swallow it!”
I guess that’s being a bit draconian, if not downright bossy, but age has its privileges. One of them is being hard of hearing so I don’t have to listen to the ravings of cellular junkies. Don’t get me wrong. I think the cell phone is a marvelous invention—if the users are out-of-house broken and don’t yell at the top of their lungs in places like the bathroom. I kid thee not; I’ve been startled into a sphincter crisis by a voice in the next stall booming in my ear.
Before dealing with more negative sides of using cell pones in public, let me enumerate a few of the benefits. If a member of the family calls from a grocery store and asks if I need anything, that passes muster. It’s heaven sent during an emergency. A cell phone recently saved the life of a woman who had been buried under the debris of a collapsed house. Shooting sprees in courthouses and churches have actually overloaded police and 911 operators. In Atlanta, police received 1500 calls about that rampage in the courthouse. The Milwaukee shooting of the pastor and his teenage son, along with five member of the Living Church of God (a maverick Protestant group that holds services on Saturdays and believes the end of the world is upon us) brought in a flood of calls, one of the lady worshippers winding up her report to 911 from the scene by saying: “I guess the potluck tonight will have to be cancelled.” The next week’s bulletin board probably read: Potluck & Apocalypse on Hold.
Hit-and-run drivers and other traffic violators have been quickly caught from information phoned in by other drivers. Ordinarily, yakking it up while driving can be as dangerous as sipping on hot latte, shaving, reading the morning paper, or by being distracted by road rage.
Phone Etiquette
If you think you’re safe from cell yellers on planes, forget it. In two years, the last haven free of cell use will be invaded by those unable to survive in the silence of their minds. The warning that radiation from overuse of the phones can grow tumors on the brains (if they actually possess such a piece of equipment) may come too late.
Another advantage of aging is that I no longer have to travel by rail or bus and spend time in stations where many perpetrators of high decibels lurk. The last time I was stuck in a bus station, I had the unfortunate experience of listening to a Korean speaking on his cell phone and demonstrating a complete lack of faith in the phone’s amplification. Thinking that his garbled syntax had something to do with bus arrivals and departures, a crowd gathered around him, leaned in, and tried to make out what he was saying.
It’s my conclusion that younger people trust amplification and speak in softer voices. If you observe a college campus, you’ll see students going from building to building, holding phones to their ears. Although they speak quietly, you may wonder how much comradeship is lost by the lack of personal exchanges with their fellow students.
Restaurants and theatres are getting more insistent that the phones be turned off in their establishments, but it’s a losing battle with two-thirds of American adults carrying phones.
Laurence Fishburne was recently given a standing ovation, but not for a sterling performance in a Broadway play. After a cell phone had been ringing insistently in the audience, he stopped acting and screamed: “Are you going to turn that (expletive deleted) thing off?”
After getting out of the slammer in her much-adulated poncho (which looked like mail armor for a gladiator), Martha Stewart roamed her $40 million estate, but when the ankle monitor began to chafe her ankle, she complained. If she has low tolerance for her ankle bracelet, she can exchange it for a slave’s iron collar around the neck. That should quiet her until she begins her two TV shows.
Do you think when she starts her imitation of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice,” instead of firing the losers, she might sentence them to Devil’s Island? “You’re fried!” Or, “You’re fricasseed!”
Here’s an idea, Martha. Stop focusing on your salad and listen. Couldn’t a lighter ankle monitor be made with a wireless connection to the wearer’s cell phone? When the ringer is turned off, incoming calls will quietly vibrate the ankle, allowing the owner to take the call away from audiences or other gatherings.
How does that grab you, Martha? After all, your cupcake T-shirts are selling like hotcakes. Why not a Martha Stewart ankle bracelet with a touch of red velvet?
Ding-a-Ling. Are you listening, Martha? Let’s make a deal.
