Now there's a soon be extinct object; I almost had to explain what they were to the Misses SQ when we happened to see one. I regaled them with tales of standing outside the local municipal swimming pool when I was a little girl making Scotch calls to home (hoping that somebody heard my three rings) to let them know I was ready to come home. No idea how long I had to wait to be collected. Or the time Mr SQ and I were new arrivals in Cape Town looking for jobs and dossing down in a bedsit. We had to answer adverts by walking to the local corner store to make calls from the "tickey box" which was also next to the gaming table. We'd have to bribe the kids there to keep quiet for a few moments as we made our nervous enquiries, hoping that the money and time wouldn't run out before we'd had our say, wanting prospective employers to think us cool and desirable rather than down to our last dime and desperate. My children just couldn't grasp the concept of a phone with a dial. Anyone remember the advance to the Protea phone with it's distinctive ring?
There was a time when getting a home phone was a major achievement, and my mom was a past master at flirting with the P&T guys to get our names moved up the queue. No doubt experience perfected her performance, as we relocated a lot. We would wait by the phone, hoping for a boy to ring, and pray that he would have manners good enough to get past my mom, who might have been lax about a few things, but was a stickler for good telephone manners. When Blues Restaurant in Camps Bay celebrated their tenth anniversary some time ago, their advert ran, "Remember ten years ago, when phones were still attached to walls?" Those were the only type of phones we knew. When Miss SQ No 1 was born, I was sadly unable to take the calls from wellwishers, as I was glued to the bed breastfeeding her, or glued to the washing machine doing her nappies. YES, sluicing, soaking and washing nappies. By the time Miss SQ No 2 came along (don't blink, it was barely a year later, with another set of nappies to sluice, soak, wash and hang out to dry) Mr SQ ensured that I had a cordless phone so that I could feed her, fend her elder sister off and talk to wellwishers all at the same time. Of course there were never as many callers for a second child, but it was still wonderful to have a chance to chat amidst all the babyhood this and that.
THEN came the moment when the cellphone made it's arrival. My brick, weighing in at about 5 kg allowed me to keep in touch with Mr SQ on his many travels when I was alone at home with the two little ones, usually a little run down and exhausted. Fortunately, we all survived, though I'm not quite sure how? I used to read Telephone Ted to them during the lonely days/nights/days/nights who knows, they blurred so much during those exhausting times. And my lonely mind was called on to draw on the telephone calls of note which marked my life. The Best and the Worst. Those were the ones nobody wanted to receive or make, but we won't go there. The amazingly happy ones are the best ones to think about. Like when you got called for a second interview. And then you got called to say you had the job, the car, the fat salary. Or a boy you knew called to say he fancied you. Even better, the dishy doctor on your shift managed to wheedle your unlisted number out of P&T (not that you didn't want to be contacted, no nay never, you'd just acquired your first flat and phone and were simply dying for it to ring) to ask you to the annual anaesthetic ball. Of course I went, but I promise I didn't fall asleep!
And going one further, when a summer romancer tracked me down past the stiff British reserve of the BT operators, testing all the numbers I'd given him in my country bumpkin innocence, but omitting the area code, and made my day and my life complete by calling me one day. He is, and remains the current Mr SQ No 1 btw. See, perseverance pays off chaps. Yet of all these important phone calls, the one that changed my life immeasurably was the one from my doctor's secretary, just before she shut shop on a Friday evening ahead of a long weekend, asking when I answered, if that was the "very pregnant Suzy Q?" I was about to become a mother!
These were dramatic times. The phone would ring, and news would be delivered. Mr SQ had a bag of 20c coins and a list of people to phone when Miss SQ No 1 was born to first inform friends and family from the call box at the end of the ward about our happy news. This proved to be more than problematic, as many of them lived abroad. Today folks just mms the birth video from their cellphones. I also believe people break up relationships, if not engagements and marriages by sending an sms, and then changing their status on facebook. Yet no face to face consultation. People are talk talk talking all the time, but what are they actually saying? Can't it wait? ("I'm boarding now. I'm getting off the plane and onto the bus.") People at restaurants text other people but don't engage in conversation with the people right next to them. Like someone once said at the height of Friends fame, "People are so busy watching Friends that they don't have time to make their own friends." So in a high tech world of previously unimagined communication systems, are we really communicating at all?
Hey everyone, let's talk more! Call me. Let me know if perchance you are enjoying reading my blog. And if that fails, just skype, sms, email, tweet or update me, just let me know, please...!?
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Love,
Suzy Q x
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