Sunday Scribblings #48 – Telephone

Red dial telephone.

I was the phone that lived in the basement at 11 Santamonica Blvd.

The one that Jenn and Kim (and often Lori Day) made the crank calls with. The one that they used to speak quietly to their “boy friends” or gossip with their “best friends” on.

I would sit on top of that maple desk, the one next to the wood paneled basement
walls. I remember how they would slide into that desk that held me and my buddies Phone Book and Yellow Pages.

There was often quite a bit of doodling going on while while they talked. Sometimes, they even used the holes on my dial to create perfect little circles in pencil which they later tried to erase. Just the thought of that eraser sends tickle-shivers up and down my long handled hand-set.

Now I cease to exist.

Even though Kim held on to me for awhile as a “vintage” momento of the past, better things came along.

Yes, evolution got the better of me. A new species arose that blew me out of the water. Suddenly new varieties of communication organisms found their niche and replaced me.

The cordless phone.

The one that Jennifer won for “customer service excellence” when she worked at Canada Trust (ha!). She was proud of that phone and forgot all about me. She used to brag that her cordless phone was the same one that Jerry Seinfeld had. How could I compete?


So, I became extinct, no longer able to survive against superior competition.

I watched, from my electronic graveyard in the sky, though, as that cordless phone became less and less desireable the smaller and more sophisticated cordless phones became.

And then the whole cell phone wave, and now the texting craze?

How can we, the telephone species, survive when everyone seems to find it much easier to abbreviate their thoughts in a text?

I wonder, will texting follow the telephone devolution and experience a future wave of extinction similar to ours?