I have never been one to enjoy talking on the phone. I don’t like calling people. I always feel awkward when I’m on a phone call. It’s ironic, because I work for a telephone company and I spend a good share of my week on conference calls, but I really don’t enjoy the sport.
Because I work for a telephone company, there’s motivational marketing messages hung around the building showing teenagers all giddy because they’re talking on a phone in their bedroom. The ads remind me of those ads from the 60s and 70s when Mom and Dad were rich enough to spring for a second line and a princess phone for the daughter, where she could talk from her bedroom. The kids of poor parents resorted to stretching the telephone cord across the kitchen and into the broom closet, where they could enjoy privacy. I have never had the urge to sit in a broom closet and the only excitement I feel about having a phone in the bedroom is that nowadays it’s usually a gadget phone so laden with extraneous features that it could double as a bidet.
My sister and her family are currently living in Italy. We have relatively affordable international calling plans on our phone but I’d rather just exchange email messages. In fact, I’m most comfortable exchanging email messages on most occasions. Sometimes a chat on an Instant Messenger or a video chat on Skype is nice, but in reality I’d just like to sit down and type what I’m thinking and then wait for a response at the leisure of the other party. I prefer email over Twitter direct messages and I really prefer email over Facebook messenger or whatever the hell that annoying thing that pops up everywhere is called. Email is starting to become the written letter of the 21st century; it takes time to sit down and write a coherent email that is worthy of attention. I write a couple of emails to Earl everyday. I usually sign them “Fondly”. He can feel the warmth and that gets us through until we can see each other.
I’ve never figured out why I don’t like talking on the telephone, by the way. I don’t know if it’s because of too many screwed up Chinese take-out orders or if it’s because I was called “ma’am” on one too many occasions prior to puberty or what because phone calls in general feel intrusive to me, but it’s something that I do because I must, not something that I enjoy.
Don’t tell the telephone company I work for that I don’t have a princess phone in our bedroom. I’ll have to hide in the broom closet or something.
