Connectedness

E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, iChat, Linked-in...  a very great change from the time when my grandparents living six miles from the highway on a dirt road had a telephone on the wall that connected them with neighbors and a central operator who could connect them to family and friends far and wide.  Their telephone was a “party line” shared with several other farm families in the general area.  The signal from the magical machine that a call was for them Grandpa and Grandma was two short rings and a long one.  All other combinations were signals for other people on the party line.  It seemed like magic that Uncle Billy and Aunt Mae down the road could be reached without even ringing the operator first.  We could pick up the ear receiver, stand close to the mouthpiece, and make two long turns with the crank on the side of the phone and usually Aunt Mae would answer. If she didn’t answer we knew she was out feeding chickens or working in the garden.  In those days nobody imagined that someday we could leave a message after a usually polite electronic voice would say something like, “We can’t take your call right now, so please leave a message after the beep.”  

...So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how connecting in those days wasn’t easy… and how disconnecting these days is so difficult.  As ridiculous as it would have seemed even thirty years ago, now when I go for a bike ride I take along a cell phone. I ride out to a place at the seashore with the intention of sitting alone quietly on a little bluff overlooking the sand and surf. Margaret and just about anybody else in San Diego or anywhere else in the wide world can find me there. The phone rings and I seldom ignore it.