watch out for that chasm!

There are so many cordless phones in this place that my memory has weakened on some of the advances in technology that have happened during my lifetime. I mean, until five minutes ago, how much time had I recently spent pondering the finer points of the expandable telephone cord? But, as I sat here facing an empty page, feeling the need to write, but having absolutely no clue where to focus my attention, I couldn’t help but study the one corded phone in the house.

Has there ever been a phone cord which didn’t develop slinky-like kinks after extended use? The DNA perfection of the coils is marred by two simple curves flowing in the wrong direction.

When I was a child, we weren’t even allowed to own our phone; we had to rent it monthly from the telephone company. As a pre-teen in a house with three females, we had a 40 foot long cord on our kitchen phone. We were spoiled by the ability to wander the house while on the phone. I can clearly picture balancing the receiver on the stair railing while switching to the upstairs phone. Occasionally, my best friend and I would play a game in which the object was to hang up the downstairs receiver and race to the upstairs one before the connection was lost. Sometimes we made it, sometimes we didn’t. Now, I am so spoiled, I won’t usually answer the office phone because the reality of being anchored to the desk suddenly reminds me of everything I need to be doing in another room.

I always wanted a princess phone when I was younger. Nowadays, mentioning a princess phone probably brings forth images of a Disney-themed masterpiece in cheap plastic. In my youth, it was a fancy dial phone of elaborate design. Instead, we had a standard olive green (it was the seventies, after all). Our first touch tone was mustard yellow – a status symbol of moving up in the world – it took so little then.

The mustard yellow phone of elongated cord could be found attached to my ear as I pranced through the living room dusting to the strains of Mozart’s 40th. It was during those years that, proud of my well-learned telephone etiquette, I loved calling my mother at work, just so I could ask for her by first and last name. The phone was like the computer is now, a barrier between me and the listener which obscured my paralyzing shyness. For a period in high school, drama would become that tool.

Now, I examine that phone knowing that tomorrow I must make a call. I wonder just when I started being afraid. I dissect my psyche to search for clues to what brought it about. I come up empty.

All I know is that my ankle is much less swollen, and I am trying to talk myself out of having to make the call. Those coils make really cool patterns on the curtain...