Mary McGrath
Who still has a landline? I do, and I’m glad I have it.
Although I’ve got a groovy iPhone 6, I certainly don’t want to be stuck if the power grid goes down. Many of my friends say I am wasting money by keeping my home phone, but I’ll bet when the big one hits, they will be knocking on my door.
“Excuse me, my cell isn’t working. Do you have a landline?”
“Sure, you want to trade for a can of soup?”
I could become very popular in the event of a natural disaster, and fill my cupboards with all sort of sustainable items.
Besides, I am very attached to my phone number. I’ve had her for at least 20 years, and parting with her seems like an act of infidelity. In fact, just the other day, I overheard a conversation that saddened me.
“You like your iPhone better than me,” my landline moaned.
“Now that’s not true,” I assured her, while completing another text.
My cell phone jumped in. “Of course she likes me better! I’m cuter, I connect to the Internet, and I take great pictures,” she added, flashing a selfie that I took last week.
“Now don’t worry, you still have better reception, even if you can’t take a photo,” I reassured her.
She moaned, giving me a lonely dial tone.
I can’t just kick her to the curb.
So, where do all those landline phone numbers go once they’re disconnected?
Is there a huge landfill for them? Do they all jump in once their owners cut the cord and have a landline party underground? Do they exchange phone numbers with one another?
Perhaps they text one another, I don’t know.
Or maybe they simply scramble themselves, and are reincarnated as Smartphone numbers.
Next thing I know, our dogs and cats will be having their own phones. Maybe one of my cats will learn to text, so she can tell me what she wants for dinner.
I still remember my landline phone number from Studio City. Poplar-14042. We didn’t have prefixes back then, just names of flowers, towns and other random things. We all seemed to get by just fine by making phone calls, dropping by, or simply saying hello on the street.
Nowadays, half the people I pass on the sidewalk are glued to their phones, oblivious to anything that is going on around them. I’m scared that one of these phone junkies will bang into me without even signaling.
Don’t get me started on using the phone while you are driving.