STAY in TOUCH

STAY IN TOUCH

What did we do before automated telephone answering?  Before call waiting?  Before voice messaging and texting?

I’m really ancient so I remember life before those times.  After all, I did most of my living in the modern age, in the 20^th century. Everything was so “up-to-date” that a film studio took it as part of its name. It was, as Dickens might have said: “The best and the worst of times”.

The worst times were the two World Wars, and even though our little Covey did not have a personal telephone   I’m pretty sure that telephones can be included in the best of times. Very few people had receivers in their homes.  Urgent calls were made from those darling red boxes that were on every street corner.

Today, children all come equipped with the mandatory smart phone Velcro strip on the palm of their hands.  Then, our hands only contained balls or skipping ropes and the occasional jam sandwich.  When we left the house, we were free.  Free from parental interference, free from contact of any kind.  If parents needed to contact their children they used the tried and true method that had worked for epochs: open the front door and yell! Our dad was a little different. He was not going to strain his voice.  If he needed us, he’d whistle. And believe me, if we heard that whistle we’d run as fast as we could to get home before he needed to whistle again.

My own children experienced similarly freedom they just had to be home by the time the street lights went out or when they were hungry – whichever came first.

As a teenage I had a short tenure (actually I lasted a day!) as a telephone receptionist for a lawyer’s office in the very esteemed Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London England. Why only a day you may ask?  Well, the telephone I was charged with operating was one of those wire and plug contraptions that you’ve only seen pictures of.  Actually, I was quite bright and intelligent, but, after I’d connected and disconnected all the wrong people, it was obvious to all that my future did not lie in this direction.

Overall, it was a solid learning experience; I now knew that while telephones would be fine for personal interactions, I should avoid them as a career choice.  So I did.

Eventually, I made my way to Canada which was a much more up-to-date environment for telephone communication.  Telephones were one size fits all, they were black and they were boring, but everyone had one. 

If you’ve ever wondered why telephones have letters as well as numbers there was a period when the alphabet was needed and it certainly wasn’t for texting. At that time, a telephone number in Toronto consisted of three letters which corresponded to the area, plus three numbers.  So, if you were in the WALNUT area your number might be WAL230.  All accessed with the handy dandy rotary dial.

If you had a direct line you paid more for the service than if you had a party line but it was worth it because you didn’t have to worry about a chitty, chatty neighbour tying up the line when you needed it.

Time marched on the way it always does.  Populations grew larger and telephone numbers grew longer. Rotary dials gave way to push buttons.  Colours became ubiquitous, (pink being the favourite of teenage girls).  And through it all, when you made a call a human voice answered.

If you called a friend who was engaged in a conversation with another friend, then you’d get a busy signal.  That was your signal to put the phone down, go about your life, then call your friend later.  Calling a business number was a similar experience.  If the answerer was busy with someone else on the line, you would be told so and asked to “hold on one moment please”.  Either way, you did not need to spend endless time holding on to phone that is either playing useless messages or dreadful music.

That was a time when telephones were a good thing for me, because they enabled me to make some extra money which, we badly needed to survive.  We had been in Canada long enough to have a telephone and for me to become completely comfortable with making and receiving calls.  I had a nine to five job every day in an office with no chance of earning more money, so what was I to do. 

The answer was to get an additional job. So, I became a telephone solicitor.  Yes, I left work at five o’clock grabbed a sandwich and a drink, took a streetcar to become one of those very annoying, uninvited, life interrupters. 

In case you’re thinking this was anything like today’s telephone soliciting – think again.  It wasn’t.  This was no big marketing company domiciled in a far-off land.  No.  This was a room on the second floor of a downtown building, run by a woman who was on the forefront of telephone advertising.  The room, known as a ‘Boiler Room’ had space for about six women all armed with a page from the local telephone directory, a pen and paper, a rotary telephone, and a script that I still remember today: “Good evening.  You have just won a free dancing lesson to the Arthur Murray dance studios.  Isn’t that wonderful!”

Not everyone who received that greeting, thought it was wonderful.  Many, many thought it best to slam the receiver down with a thud.  Then there were the erstwhile comedians who described the dreadful injuries they had to their extremities that prevented them from dancing.  Generally, though, I learned a great skill and although I was appreciative of the bonus I received for selling the highest dollar value dancing lessons to one poor guy, I never felt right about it and had to keep telling myself: “That’s the name of the game”!

In due course, husband got employment, and I was able to find a higher paying job, so telephone soliciting became a long-ago memory.  So why is it poking around in my brain today?  Well it could be that I’m required to enter the 21^st century.  I need to learn the vagaries of today’s telephone.  My landline will soon be a thing of the past, and that tiny little computer that I can hold in the palm of my hand will be my only (albeit constant) contact with the world.