I may have mentioned in the past that I do not like talking on the phone. If I’m going to be honest, “do not like” isn’t exactly how I feel. “Despise it more than paying bills or cleaning out the litter box” is probably more accurate. That’s right: I would rather scoop up cat feces than speak to someone on the phone. But why this splenetic wrath against Ma Bell? (And am I only writing this blog just so I can finally, casually, drop the word “splenetic”? Maybe.)
Picture this: Glastonbury, 1978. In our ranch house overlooking the farm, we have a phone, complete with rotary dial, mounted on the wall. (The phone might be yellow.) And it has a stiff, curly cord that barely reaches from the wall unit to the kitchen table. Now, I was too young to be answering the phone and having lengthy conversations. Kim, too. Dad was always either outside working the farm, or inside, claiming to be too deaf to even hear the phone ring. This left my mother to answer all the calls.
Mom was not an idle woman. She was a stay-at-home parent until Kim and I were in school, and she had to keep track of us, clean the house (and can I reiterate, we lived on a dairy farm? There were flies, tracked-in dirt and manure, silage flying through the air during corn-chopping season ... the cleaning never stopped), plant the garden, tend the garden, pick the ripening vegetables, can her own pickles, jams, and pasta sauce, freeze green beans, corn, and other assorted crops, plus feed everyone three times a day. Mom had a lot going on. She also had a mother-in-law who called two or three times a day.
Now, my grandma was a saint. A saint, I tell you! Want to fight about it? I’ll win, ’cause Grandma was the saintliest of saint-y women. But she was also a talker. Hoo boy, could she chat. (She’d even talk to me and Kim on the phone, and when you have the patience to indulge a preschooler’s and a kindergartener’s fascinating conversations, which went something like “Hi Gamma! I ate paint!” … you are a saint.) But mostly she’d talk to Mom. And I remember the look on my mother’s face when she had to strain that cord to near pop-out-of-the-wall proportions just to sit at the kitchen table. She’d stare longingly at the coffee pot far, far away on the counter, then down at her empty mug, and I knew what she was thinking: I’m trapped.
My mother had a pretty good relationship with her mother-in-law. She couldn’t very well tell the woman not to call. So she came up with a solution: she found a replacement phone cord, at least six times the length of the old one, on clearance at K-Mart. (Mom’s also a smart shopper.) We all cheered (except Dad, who didn’t see what the big deal was—if you don’t answer the phone to begin with, problem solved, right?) as my mother demonstrated the shiny new cord’s ability to stretch all the way from the wall to the stove. Amazing, right?
We were just waiting for Grandma to call, now that Mom had this newfound freedom. Grandma didn’t disappoint. Brrrrring! “Hi! I swallowed a penny!” I announced proudly, then handed the receiver to Mom.
Mom took the phone and strolled to the refrigerator. Kim and I clapped. She took out a defrosted chicken and walked over to the cutting board. We cheered. She seasoned and prepped the bird, reaching over to the spice cabinet to pull out the rosemary. We did a little dance in celebration. All the while, Mom chatted happily with Grandma.
Then it happened: Mom propped the phone between cheek and shoulder, grabbed the roasting pan, and moved to open the oven. Said appliance was at the far end of the kitchen, to the left of the stove. Mom stopped. Put down the pan. Stretched. Pulled against the cord. Leaned forward like Jane Fonda reaching for the walls in an eighties aerobic workout tape. My sister and I gasped. Could she do it? Mom streeeetched, and reeeeached … and her fingertips barely brushed the oven door handle.
There would be no roasting of the chicken whilst on the phone.
Mom sighed, waved my sister over to open the oven and shove the pan in, and retreated to the kitchen table. At least she had a full cup of coffee in front of her. The miles of cord looped around her ankles as she sat, trapped on the phone for another thirty minutes, unable to check on the chicken.
To add insult to injury, when the call finally ended and Mom went to hang up the phone, she tripped on the new cord and sprained her foot.
So yes. I hate talking on the phone. I have all my life. And by the way, so does my mother.
This is not at all how Mom or the phone looked. But if you're under 30, this is what you're picturing anyway.
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