They have ruled my existence since I've cared. At first it was a singular bell tone that had adjustable volumes. The heavy rotary beasts of the seventies. A phone you could kill someone with with a good blow to the head. None of this modern pixie material. Hard and loud. I'm HERE! It would scream. I've GOT IT! We would scream back.
To get a call from the outside states was a big deal. Expensive in a household with a modest income. An international phone call was an Event. A crackly not always satisfactory Event that you could never hear very well. The neighbors had other people on their lines who sometimes listened in on their conversations. Getting a clear conversation was an indulgence that one didn't take for granted. Telephones were difficult machines that relied on other technical geegaws to operate, often thrown down with the receiver leading. Slam, "I give up!"
This is how I knew if someone was my new friend. They rang to ask you over to their house or to a birthday party. This is how I knew school was canceled. The neighbor heard it from a neighbor who got it on the radio. This is how I knew a boy liked me with a dumb excuse. "Hey, um, did you hear the fifth question on Mr. Darder's chalk board by any chance? This is Kevin (voice switches keys) by the way." He called. He called ME. All of my social awkwardness was erased because some poor male choked up enough courage to forgot the torture of potential rejection. I understood.
Rejection. Why are YOU calling me, you freak? That was always hanging over my head when I dialed the phone to ask something of someone that I had not secured a relationship with yet. And it continued when I punched in the digital numbers. And then when I picked up the tiny one bodied instrument and poked in the code into my keypad. Why are you calling me? Leave a message call me back.
I need to see eyes where the emotions can hide but only if intentional. I need to see the movement of the mouth and the rest of the parts that drive the communication home. I need to build an image to go to the voice so that I know that they really mean what they are saying.
Seizures made me feel violated. Raped by an attack out of left field that I didn't ask for and accosted me regardless. I would come to and be alone. So many times I would dial the phone and I couldn't get someone to talk me back to safety. I'd get a voice mail. Or worse it just didn't work. It wasn't human and it prevented me from getting to human help. To this day, 8 years since my last epileptic attack if I can't reach someone I feel I really need to talk to, I begin to panic. It feels familiar and awful. I've been left alone. It isn't rational. I know exactly why. But the fear is still there just the same.
Sometimes people say that they'll call back and don't. It is irritating but nowadays it seems to be part of certain cultures. Not polite but not the offense it used to be. I can live with it. Sometimes they let it go to voice mail and you never hear back from them. They may or may not be blowing me off. I give them the benefit of the doubt and curse them with little "fuck you's" in my thoughts and then I blame the phone. Because in the end, I strongly suspect that it is, as it has since I cared, controlling us on purpose.
