A SLICE OF LIFE

Lori Borgman finds the funny in everyday life, writing from the heartland of the US. Now, if she could just find her car keys…

Columnist Lori Borgman gets nostalgic about times when telephone conversations and privacy did not go hand in hand.

If you want to know how old someone is, ask them about the first phone they remember as a child. Ours was a big black rotary dial that sat in a cubby in the kitchen. Only adults made phones calls, which were short and to the point, because the receivers were so heavy few people had the upper arm strength to hold them for long. People also had to stand right next to the phone because the receivers were tethered to the black box with a short length of fabricwrapped cord.

Everybody knew every call that came in and every call that went out.

Everybody knew everybody else’s business. Privacy had yet to be invented.

The countertop rotary dial morphed into a wall phone that came with a coiled cord. The coiled cord was a technological marvel, second only to the printing press. The lucky ones could now stretch the phone cord and slip around a corner to have a semi-private conversation. You couldn’t go far with a short cord, so most everyone in the family still knew most of the business of most everyone else.

Push-button wall phones arrived with unbelievably long coiled cords. Mothers could corral rowdy children, fold laundry and fix meals, all the while maintaining a phone conversation. The long, coiled cord was the dawn of multi-tasking.

Extension phones began appearing in bedrooms and home offices. Conversations were no longer anchored in the family kitchen. Loved ones no longer knew every call that came in and every call that went out. Families had scarcer and scarcer knowledge of one another’s business, even under the same roof.

With the dawn of cordless phones and, eventually, cell phones, complete mobility had arrived. The family phone anchored in the kitchen disappeared. A few such phone lines remain, but they are largely used only by telemarketers.

Smart phones greatly increased personal autonomy and mobility. Personal phones have exponentially increased partitions within the family, privacy and even secrecy. Say hello to the Age of Isolation. Parents who want to know who is calling their children, who their children are calling, and what social plans are underway must exercise vigilance and near-constant monitoring.

The big question for parents today is at what age to give a child a cell phone. There’s

Personal phones have exponentially increased partitions within the family, privacy and even secrecy. Say hello to the Age of Isolation

a campaign called “Wait until Eighth” urging parents to wait until children are in eighth grade.

Our oldest daughter and her husband have told their early-elementary-age girls (already inquiring about phones) that when the time comes they will get a family cell phone to be shared among the girls and based in the home so that Mom and Dad can keep tabs on who is calling and what social plans are underway.

You don’t know how badly I want to suggest that they hang the family cell phone on the kitchen wall and tether it to a long, black coiled cord.