phone calls.

when and why did the very idea of making a phone call turn into something so intrusive? when texting appeared, i guess, but why? this isn't an anti-texting thing, text is an excellent way to impart simple information to which you don't need an answer. especially to more than one person. it reaches its full beauty when you need to tell four people "we're in the upstairs bar." i don't even know how upstairs bars worked before texts. but for anything more complicated than that, especially anything requiring discussion, the easiest way to sort something out is still talking to that person directly. and since we all own devices that allow us to do precisely that, why have we suddenly gotten so shy about doing it? the assumption is everything is quicker and easier to sort out by text, which it's just not. certainly for those who are constitutionally unable to write "mon 24" but have to write "Monday 24TH." but even for normal people, as i expect you wrongly like to consider yourselves, it's not that easy. the texts i most hate are the ones that say something as lethally open-ended as "let's meet up" or "when are you free?" well i'm free all sorts of times! but with a variety of complications and preferences! if we meet early the 14th is best, whereas the 16th is fine, but i definitely can't be there until 8. and the 19th would be ideal, and the 20th is probably ok, but i won't know until Monday, with a capitol fucking M. by the time i've pecked all that out with my text hating but capitol observing thumbs, it will be at least the 28th, and you'll have long since given me up for dead! where if i had just called you up, we could have sorted all that out using the mystical language of the mouth. and we'd have made a plan by now. and if you can't answer, that's fine, i'll leave a message. which i'd like you to listen to by the way because in it, i will have left the thing i was calling you up to say. i really don't understand why people call you and say "oh i saw i got a missed call from you, but i didn't listen to the message, what was it?" well the message was the thing i said. in the message. that is very much what message means. when i get a call saying "i got a message from you haven't listened to it", it takes a great deal of will power to resist saying "well i tell you what, hang up and call me back when you've listened to it." after all, you wouldn't write a letter to someone saying "i see i've got an envelope with your postmark on it, haven't opened it yet, thought i'd write back right away." the point is, replying to an email is a massive chore. replying to a text can be a small chore. answering the phone and having a quick chat is no chore at all! and neither is listening to an answering machine message. so let's not be afraid to do it. after all, we managed to do it in the "old days." people say that before cell phones, we were less enthralled to answer phones, but they're misremembering. if the house phone rang, didn't matter what you were doing, you ran to answer it. and you answered it in it's own special room of the house while standing up and with a recitation of the phone number.

my god i'm 80.