Long-Distance Calling

Years ago, in the late 1990s, an elderly neighbor of mine announced that she had outlived her time. Her new telephone with voice mail baffled her, and she didn’t even want to contemplate computers. She said that, at 89, it was time for her to go. She did manage to live a few more years, but she never did figure out voice mail.

I had a similar thought the other day when my friend called me during the day from Israel.

“Why are you calling me long-distance from Israel?” I asked him, incredulous.

“Why not?” he answered. “It’s not the 1960s.”

“But isn’t it outrageously expensive?” I asked.

He snorted. “I have a plan.” Having had enough of this topic, he moved on to others.

After he hung up, I wondered at my own surprise. I no longer worry about when or where I call, because there’s no need. Phone calls cost much less than they did when I was growing up. But, I haven’t traveled out of the country in years, so I thought the cost of international calling was exorbitant. Not if you have a plan, apparently.

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, when “long-distance” was always pronounced in italics. Nobody called during the day, when rates were high. Long-distance calls were made at night after 5 p.m., and if possible, after 11 p.m., when rates were cheapest.

In order to avoid paying long-distance charges, all kinds of shenanigans were employed. Our family lived in Philadelphia and my mother’s sister lived in Doylestown, 45 minutes away. For some inexplicable reason, if my mother called her sister, it was long-distance. But, if her sister called her, it was a local call. So, whenever my mother wanted to talk to her sister, she’d call her, let the phone ring once, and hang up. Then she’d wait for my aunt to call her back. The obvious flaw in this system was that if her sister wasn’t home when my  mother called, she wouldn’t hear the phone ring, so she wouldn’t call back. Meanwhile, my mother waited, and waited.

Collect calls were popular, too. If you were at a phone that was not your own, you’d call “collect” (meaning the person you were calling would have to pay for the call). You’d ask the operator to dial the number and she’d announce to the person who picked up that it was a collect call for a specific person. Whoever answered the phone, even if it was the person you were calling, would automatically say that the person wasn’t available. In the split second before the operator broke the connection, you would quickly say why you were calling: “I got home safely,” “The baby’s a girl,” or “Don’t look in the  basement closet.” My husband said that when his Canadian relatives were on their way to his family’s house for a visit, they’d call collect from a pay phone and ask for Phil Rizzuto. His mother, knowing the code, would refuse the call. Then they’d yell over the operator, in Italian, that they would be there in six hours.

There were also “bill-to-a-third-party” calls. If you were away from your phone and using someone else’s to call long-distance, you could bill the call to your own phone. The operator would take your number (or whatever number you gave her) and bill the call to it. A lot of people must have given false numbers, however, because the rule quickly changed. After the new protocol was in place, in order to make such a call, someone at the number you provided had to agree to the call being billed to that number. If nobody was home at your number, or you lived by yourself, there was no one to answer the operator’s verification phone call, so you were out of luck.

But now, everyone carries a phone and has a plan and the world has changed. I am not especially baffled by my cell phone, although I do need to learn to occasionally check my texts and voice mails. But I do know how to check them, so I’m not ready to call life quits like my neighbor did. The way I figure it, if I don’t learn a new technology, it’ll be replaced by a newer one in a few months, so if I can just hang in there, the technology will have checked out before I have to.

 

 

 

 

Martian Magic

When I was in elementary school, my fifth-grade teacher, Mr.(Kenneth) Sheinen, held up a clear, plastic, Bic ballpoint pen and asked the class to explain to a Martian, in writing, what it was, and what it was used for. He told us that we had to consider that the Martian had just landed on Earth and everything on our planet was foreign to him (of course it was a him; it was 1970, and times weren’t yet a-changin’* in Northeast Philadelphia).

Mr. Sheinen wanted us to describe every aspect of the pen: what it was made of, what filled the clear tube inside the pen, what the pointed tip of the pen did, how the caps were used and why, etc.

At the time, I remember thinking that, to a Martian, a ballpoint pen would appear to be magical. While we knew that they had cool stuff, like spaceships, antennas, bulging eyes, and green skin, they certainly didn’t have ballpoint pens. After all, who would want to write in Martian?

Looking back, I’m sure that Mr. Sheinen gave us this complicated project just to get some quiet time. Or, maybe he actually wanted to learn about Bic pens, his being a Martian and all.

This got me to thinking about what we perceive as magic. If I happened to time-travel from the 1700s into today’s world, I would be ready to burn everyone as witches. How could I, as an 18th-century person, not think that computers, cell phones, GPS, television, radio, streaming video and audio, Skype, and on and on, weren’t magic, and probably black magic? So much of what we use and create is invisible.

Centuries from now, when our civilization is excavated by archaeologists, what will they make of all the flat black boxes of varying sizes that they find in every house, and next to every skeleton? They won’t know about the satellites we relied on to make them work, or the electricity we used to power them. It would be fun to hear them speculate about their use.

Every thousand years or so, civiizations and their secrets disappear. That’s why I don’t understand why we marvel at the building of pyramids and the other wonders of our world. Everyone has seen drawings of the building of the pyramids, and they always include ropes hoisting slaves up each level to continue the job of building. Why? If we’ve harnessed the invisible powers of magnetism, electricity, sound, space, etc., for our needs, why do we not consider that Egyptians might have used the power of the mind, the body, or something else?

It does seem that once certain secrets of the universe have been discovered and utilized by a civilization, that society’s days are numbered. And once it’s gone, most of its knowledge is erased. The next group starts from scratch, just like poor Sisyphus, the Corinthian king who was doomed to rolling a huge boulder up a hill, watching it roll down again, and beginning again, forever.

This reminds me of Mr. Sheinen’s essay. Every time we handed our composition in to him, he said that it wouldn’t make sense to a Martian, so we started over. I hope that he finally learned how to use his Bic pen.

*The Times They Are a-Changin’, a song by Bob Dylan, 1964

New Year’s Dissolution

While everyone else, on this first day of the new year, is thinking about self-improvement, I’ve been contemplating theft. I wouldn’t think twice about going through with it, if it weren’t for my pesky conscience. If I can persuade my conscience that what I’m planning isn’t really stealing, despite indications to the contrary, then I’ll be good to go.

Back around the time the birth control pill was invented, many Catholics started saying that using the pill was not a sin; bringing children into the world that they couldn’t support was the real sin. They claimed that if their consciences were clear, they didn’t sin. I have a friend who calls this kind of Catholic a “cafeteria Catholic,” meaning he or she picks and chooses from the menu of rules. She freely admits that she has an assigned seat in the cafeteria. Many of us see her regularly.

The concept of sinning against your conscience has gained popularity and acceptance in many circles. If you have no conscience, life is a free-for-all, but most of us do, so we have to periodically check in with it before we act. That’s where I am right now.

It all started with my Christmas gift from my husband: a laptop computer. I already have a desktop computer but it’s so riddled with viruses that I have to wear a mask when I use it. A few months ago, I thought it had crashed for good, but I turned it on anyway. I managed to coax it to life long enough to buy and install software that cleaned it up and promised to protect it from attack forever, or until my next payment was due. So, I was back in business, but it was a slow business. It worked, but it took forever to do anything. Then I got a laptop and my internal debate began.

You see, over the years, I had purchased software for my desktop computer and I didn’t want to have to re-purchase it for my laptop. I wanted to transfer everything from my aged desktop onto my laptop and dispose of the desktop. But, I had clicked “I Agree,” when I downloaded or uploaded the various softwares, and one of the things I had agreed to was that I would not transfer it to another device. By clicking “I Agree,” I had agreed, even though what they were asking me to agree to wasn’t fair. But if I didn’t, they wouldn’t have let me buy the software, and where would I be then? I would be without Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, Norton Security, and more. They kind of had me over a barrel.

Now I have to buy it again and I’m not happy about it. If I were going to keep the desktop, then I suppose it would be fair for them to charge me for additional software for my second computer. But I’m not. If I bought a couch when I lived at one house, the furniture company wouldn’t charge me for the couch again if I moved it to another house. I owned it outright. But software doesn’t work that way. I could start a petition, I suppose, but I think I’ll wait for someone more energetic to do it. All I want is my old software transferred to my new computer.

That’s another problem. I bought most of the software online, meaning it was downloaded onto my computer from the mist once I bought it. I should have gone to a store and purchased a disk so I could upload it willy nilly. But I don’t even know if disks are sold anymore. Due to my indolence, I prefer to click and buy. Now I’m paying the price.

So, back to my dilemma: do I download the software onto disks and then upload it onto my laptop (as if I could figure out how to do this!) or do I buy it again?  And while I’m at it, should I print out all of my Kindle books and have them bound at Staples? It annoys me that you can only lend your Kindle book to another Kindle owner if the author has granted permission for lending it. If you own an author’s hardcover or paperback book, you can lend it out to your heart’s content, as long as the lendee returns it (a shout-out to my sister-in-law).

Life was much simpler when you could see and touch things. If I walked into a store and walked out with a disk or a book I didn’t pay for, I wouldn’t have to confer with my conscience; it would be screaming at me (along with the store’s alarm). But when you’re dealing with merchandise that is invisible, sometimes it’s also hard to see the line between right and wrong.

 

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