COMMENTARY
Bruce Andriatch: Ever on call in a cell of our own making
It was a hard-and-fast rule from my long-ago youth: When you call someone, you let the phone ring no more than seven times. If there is no answer after seven rings, there’s no one there.
Everybody I knew had a rule like this. Some said four rings was plenty. Other argued for a nice round number, like 10. But the idea was the same, that after a certain number of rings, you give up and call back later because the person you want to talk to is not there.
That seems like such a quaint concept. Now, being unavailable is becoming obsolete.
Maybe this is you: You make a phone call and no one answers. You leave a voice mail. Then you try the person’s cell phone. If there’s no answer there, you leave another voice mail. Maybe you throw in a text message or send an e-mail or a page. If that doesn’t work and you’re really persistent, you can try an instant message or go to Facebook and write on the person’s wall.
If you still don’t get a response after all of this, you either accept the fact that maybe the person isn’t around or doesn’t feel like talking right now or you move away from the “contacting” realm and into activities that might better be referred to as “stalking.”
There is something about this expectation of conversation that varies by generation. It seems younger people, so accustomed to nonstop talking/texting/ IM-ing with each other, are loath to accept that a person cannot be reached.
My experience tells me that this is so. Although I have repeatedly asked all of my children to not call my cell phone between 4:30 and 5 p. m. when I am in a meeting, invariably, that is precisely when it rings and I have to scramble to shut it off.
(It doesn’t help that my phone is so old that the vibrate setting no longer functions or that when it does ring, it plays the Muzak version of the theme from “Cheers,” but that’s another matter.)
When I see the offender later and say, “Why, why, why would you call my cell phone during the one 30-minute period in the day when I have asked you not to?” that person will say, “Because I called your desk and you didn’t answer.”
Stunned at the response, I stammer: “That’s because I wasn’t available. Believe it or not, there are times when you just can’t get hold of me.”
This begets a blank stare that suggests I have just switched from speaking English to Portuguese in midconversation.
We should have seen this coming with cell phones and the increasing ease with which we can get in touch with one another. That wasn’t the original intention. I got my first cell phone for the same reason lots of people did, so that if there was an emergency and there was no phone nearby — talk about a quaint concept — I could call someone. That’s still the No. 1 reason I use it today.
Meanwhile, the other cell phones in my house are at constant risk of bursting into flames from overuse. My three teenage daughters are so adept at text messaging and do it so frequently that their thumbs are their most muscular appendage.
Sometimes, after receiving multiple messages of some kind in a short period of time from a child, I will call back expecting to hear that either the house is on fire or we have won the lottery.
“It’s me,” I say. “You called 63 times in the last 15 minutes. What’s the matter?”
“Can I have the last Pop Tart?” It’s moments like this that help explain why I keep accidentally misplacing my cell phone.
