Phone Privileges

This week, we were watching an episode of Frasier. During the episode Martin placed a call to one of Frasier’s exes, then hung up. When the ex then called back, Niles pointed out that she must have used “star 69.” For you younguns, this was the latest and greatest technology in the 1990s. It allowed you to get the number of who had previously called you. I realize this sounds low tech now when we can see who is calling us before we even answer the phone, but believe me “star 69” was pretty amazing. REM even made a song about it.

When I was growing up, my sister and I had it pretty good. From a pretty young age we had our own phones in our rooms. Not, a separate phone line, but our own handset on our family’s one phone line. When I was growing up we didn’t have any cordless phones, which were still a pretty new-fangled thing, so having a separate phone in your room meant you didn’t have to have phone conversations in the kitchen or in the family room where my parents had a retro-looking but functional candlestick phone to match their Colonial decor. Of course, if that’s the room you happened to be in when the phone rang then you had no choice but to answer on that crazy contraption, which was not especially fun.

Of course, having phones in our rooms was a privilege. It could be lost, as my sister proved on two separate occasions. The first time I believe was when my cousins happened to be over for a visit. Perhaps bored with our usual games of Marco Polo and Big Fat Juicy Turnip (don’t ask) my cousin Lauren and my sister Emily decided they were going to make some crank calls. My cousin Kristen and I wisely decided we didn’t feel like participating in this hare-brained scheme.

Rather than simply scrolling through the phone book and calling numbers at random, they decided to keep things simple (and free) and simply prank call the operator. (Do operators even still exist?) They were pretty young at the time so thankfully their calls were relatively innocent. Still the operator probably didn’t appreciate fielding repeat calls from two giggling little girls asking “Do you want to dance?” So, a few minutes later our phone rang and when my mom picked up the operator let her know what was going on. Lauren and Emily got busted, and Em’s phone was removed from her room and hidden away in a closet for a month or so. I suppose she learned her lesson, because I don’t recall any more crank call episodes, but it was not the last time she lost her phone privileges.

Sometime after her punishment period was up and her phone was returned to her room, my sister was playing beauty salon with her dolls and stuffed animals. My sister needed a hairdryer to make her imaginative bedroom beauty salon complete and she decided that her phone handset looked enough like a hairdryer. The problem of course was that the cord got in the way and also perhaps there was that annoying beeping noise. So she decided to simply unplug the handset from the phone base. Like “star 69” the younger generation might not pick up on the issue here, but older readers will realize that unplugging the handset is akin to leaving a phone off the hook, meaning that until it is plugged back in and hung up the Grosso household was not going to be able to make or receive a single phone call.

This probably wouldn’t have been that big of an issue if it was just for the hour or so that my sister was playing make believe beauty salon, but she got bored of her game, or went out to play with a friend, or was otherwise distracted and the phone/make believe hairdryer was completely forgotten about.

Old school phones would beep incessantly if you left them off the hook. But if you unplugged them like my sister did there would be no telltale beeping. So, a couple of days later when we hadn’t received a single phone call (and this was at a time when people made and received a lot more phone calls than they do today), and people kept getting a busy single when they tried to call us, Dad realized there was something wrong with our phone line. I believe my parents initially blamed Bell Atlantic, but before calling in a service person they decided to go through and check all the phones in the house, and discovered Em’s forgotten beauty salon. Once again, her phone was taken away for a period of time.

These days what a phone is capable of doing is pretty amazing. They’re also becoming more and more of a necessity, but I suspect this leaves parents of young children in a difficult position. Do they supply kids with phones for their own safety and security? Forget the concerns about too much screentime or exposure to inappropriate content, how do you deal with the fact that kids being kids will do dumb things like crank calling the operator or using their phone as an imaginary hair dryer? Are kids still punished with losing their phone privileges, when this means something a little different than having to use the annoying candlestick phone in the family room instead of talking on the phone in your bedroom?

Parents aren’t the only ones left with a bit of a conundrum when it comes to phones. Authors face similar problems when it comes to the fact that everyone carries around a device with them that allows them access to nearly unlimited information and the ability to connect with just about anyone at any time. It can make plotting a challenge, and it’s interesting to see the different ways authors deal with this. I’m currently reading and enjoying The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, who deals with the phone issue, by having a space alien throw away everyone’s phones. It’s a fun book, but in order for the plot to work Connie had to make sure her characters (much like my sister) lost their phone privileges.

— Alissa