Making Connections
Making Connections – I read, see, and hear you.
Remember a taut string attached to two paper cups? Of course, it’s a kid’s first telephone! Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I remember talking on the telephone with friends on either a slim, cream-colored, rotary-dial, Princess telephone mounted to the wall or a boxy, table-topped one with a coiled cord from receiver to base and a very long cord attached somehow to the wall. I couldn’t carry the phone to another room for privacy, so calls were usually short and to the point with no dilly-dallying, especially if my brother was nearby.
Going to sleepover camp for two weeks each summer during my junior high years, I had no telephone to call home. Communication was through back-and-forth cards and letters from my mom and dad, and receiving the much-anticipated care package to share with my campmates.
To see my friends, I had to walk, hop on my bike, or have my parents drive me to their houses. After a 7-hour drive across the state with my mom navigating the journey with big paper maps, constantly being awkwardly unfolded and refolded in the passenger seat, I greeted my relatives. On the drive, if my dad needed to make a call, he had to find a telephone booth along the route and look up a number in the thick phone book that lay inside. In the United States, those phone booths are now obsolete. London, though, still has those cute red phone booths for all the touristy photo ops.
When in college, I made the ubiquitous, brief Sunday night call to my parents while other girls in the dorm waited patiently in line to use the same phone for their weekly long-distance calls home, remembering that each ticking minute cost money.
Since I traveled cross-country to college, I either drove with a friend whose car was loaded with state maps or a AAA Trip-Tik that plotted our route in a compact, spiraled flipbook. If I flew to or from home instead of driving, a travel agent or airline’s operator made my flying arrangements. If planes were delayed, communication with my parents was nonexistent. They would drive two hours to the airport to pick me up only to be informed that my flight would be late. The waiting game continued until my arrival at the gate. Patience was the only option.
Overseas communication was also a challenge back then. My dad made a few trips to Egypt in the 1960s and had to send telegrams to inform us of arrivals. Airmail correspondence was thin, lightweight paper all folded and gummed into an envelope, a sent and received treasure! Now, overseas travelers have great phone apps to use; What’s App and Facetime are a couple of ways to communicate back and forth with friends and loved ones.
Much has changed since my growing-up years. Thankfully, I was born after the Pony Express, the Wells Fargo stagecoach, and Morse code! I have witnessed a lot of change in the many ways of connecting with others through the written word. Form and speed of communication have progressed exponentially. From holding a pencil or pen to paper, then tapping keys on a manual, then using an electric typewriter with carbon paper for copies while using White Out or correction tape for erasing mistakes to the now ever-present desktop computer, laptop, screen, or smartphone for editing, sending, and receiving emails—all at lightning speed. Magically, we can delete our written mistakes and send our corrected texts and documents with a touch of a button or a voice command.
A big “thank-you” goes out to all our combo sound and sight device makers. Our phones morphed from rotary-dialed, touch-tone, antenna, mobile, cordless, landline, and cell to smartphones like iPhone/iPad, Samsung, and Galaxy. Becoming a recent grandmother from afar, I can’t imagine what I would do if I could not see and hear those little cutie pies on a regular basis. I’d have to move down there for my frequent face-to-face time. I really don’t know how my parents did it without Facetime or Zoom. Kudos to technology!
The evolution of making personal connections through technology is mindboggling. There are pros and cons of connecting through devices. Today, people value immediacy; they want things now. For some, patience is no longer a virtue. Teenagers and young adults prefer nonverbal touchscreens for communication, such as texting and emojis. Physically conversing with one another is becoming a lost art form with this younger generation. Not reading body language or hearing tone of voice can lead to misunderstandings. Nothing can compare to a close connection topped with an actual icing-on-the-cake embrace. Facetime or Zoom is the second-best replacement for that wanted, tight bear hug, but I’ll take it any day when I can’t have the real thing!
I marvel at how far technology has advanced. If devices continue to connect us in a positive way with our friends and loved ones, then I’m all for it. I think technology will never replace the human touch or sitting next to one another fully engaged in conversation. Maybe I should pick up the phone more often to hear a human voice on the other end rather than sending an impersonal text message. Might a handwritten card sent to a friend be much more personal than texting to see how the surgery went? Let’s strike a well-balanced form of old-school and advanced tech for hearing, speaking, writing, and connecting with one another.
P.S. I still like to send a letter or card in the mail. Go ahead, call me old-school; I don’t mind a bit! Here’s a great link to see how kids today respond to this now dinosaur phone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok
Bit by bit, that’s all she wrote…