Teaching E.T. to phone home

OK, I'm back...took a little break, but back to the writing...


When I was a teenager, getting my own phone was a huge deal. I was stoked when I got one similar to this for Christmas:

Yeah, little bit different from the mobile phones kids get now. For one, mine wasn't even a private line. It was just an extension I could plug into the wall to use the home line in my own room. All my brothers had to do to ruin my day was pick up another extension and start taunting me on it.

Equally embarrassing was my parents picking up a line to tell me it was time to hang up. And parents made conversations more awkward as well--you never knew who was gonna answer the phone when you called your friends, so you had to be on your best behavior, and use polite tones when you called someone, just in case their mom or dad answered.

Now, with private mobile phones, teens know none of that. They either call each other directly, or bypass the conversation all together and just text each other.

Well, the kids with smartphones do that. Mark, on the other hand, has a dumb phone, with limited phone minutes. When he complained how quickly he used up his phone minutes, I suggested using the home phone to call his friends instead.

"Oh, yeah!" he said, snapping his fingers. "I never thought of that!"

I sighed.

And now, Mark (and his friends!) are learning 1980s phone etiquette because of it. It's hilarious to watch.

I reached for the ringing phone one night after Mark went to bed.

"Hello?" I said into the phone.

I heard a surprised gasp, then silence, then the caller hung up.

"That was Lindsey," Mark called from his room. "She's not gonna talk to you."

"Well, she better talk to me--at least to say hello and ask for you!" I said. I realized no one teaches kids to do that anymore--they just dial a direct line to their friends, completely bypassing nosy parents.

The next time Lindsey called and hung up, it was 10 p.m.

"Tell Lindsey that's too late to call," I told Mark.

He was horrified. "Don't tell her I'm in bed," he begged. "Nobody else has to go to bed this early!"

Apparently, the only thing more embarrassing than parents answering the phone is going to bed early. (9:30 is early to high schoolers.)

"Fine," I said. "Blame it on me. Tell her I go to bed at 9, and the phone wakes me up."

That seemed to work. "OK," he said, visibly relieved.

The next day I came home from work, and Mark was on the phone.

"Time to hang up," I told him, and so he did. He looked right at me and clicked the off button.

"You say goodbye first, and then you hang up!" I said, shaking my head. "You don't just hang up in the middle of her sentence!"

"Oh," Mark said. "You said hang up, so I did."

"Call her back and say goodbye properly," I said, not realizing I'd ever have to teach someone to do that.

A few days later, Mark carried the cordless phone into his room and shut the door. The red light on the base phone lit up, and stayed lit for a good 40 minutes. I was expecting a phone call, which wasn't a big deal until I realized Mark had no idea how to use call waiting on a traditional phone.

"Time to hang up," I whispered to him. "I'm expecting a call."

He held his hand over the speaker--maybe he was a faster learner than I thought!

"Tell them to call your cell phone," he said.

"They don't have my cell phone number," I said back. "Now HANG UP!!!"

"All right, all right," he muttered. "I gotta go," he said into the phone, then hung up and handed over the phone.

"Something's wrong with that phone," he said, as I walked out of the room. "It kept clicking the whole time."

"That's call waiting," I told him, realizing I didn't have to wait for my phone call anymore. "When you hear that, click the flash button to answer it."

"Ooooooh," Mark said. "I didn't know that."

Of course you didn't, I thought. You didn't grow up in the 80s.

Maybe soon he'll get the hang of it--or maybe some day he'll finally earn that smartphone he's been hankering for, and it won't matter anymore.

But until then, if you need me, call me at home--although it may take a few times to get through. If you're lucky.