One Ringy Dingy

My new, young co-worker looked at me wide eyed when I told her I would be going on “the switchboard” to cover calls last Friday afternoon. I honestly hadn’t meant to reference the old fashioned type where an operator would sit and hand connect telephone wires to get the call to the right place, but the newer addition where one person manually directs the telephone connections by pushing buttons. Of course, in this day and age of putting the responsibility on the caller by using electronic directions on how to connect with their desired person, even the term “operator” may soon become extinct.

I found myself using the same outmoded type of description while driving on a hot day with a broken air conditioner. With the children sitting in the back seat, I suggested they “roll down their windows”. What? How? Of course I meant for them to put their windows down by pushing an electronic button, but that seemed too complicated to say!

I miss the Yellow Pages, the actual big, heavy yellow book. When I Google “Yellow Pages” to get a telephone number, the exact information needed may not be known and there is no option to browse. For instance, it would be impossible to get the phone number for a used car dealership in Cumberland whose name I forgot in the electronic system. In the hard copy, paper book, I could go to the “Used Car Dealers” and go down the list until the proper name clicked in my brain. Additionally, the book, being several inches thick, made a great, makeshift booster seat for a young child!

Of course, living with older parents often confused the issue even further. My mother always referred to our refrigerator, (avocado in color to match our other appliances,) as the “ice box”. As a child, I knew that ice cubes were in the freezer, so it made sense. It took me several years to realize her description was of the model that actually held a huge chunk of ice to keep things cold!

Who can forget the dedicated dads who would lug the VCR recorder around Disney World to document the family’s vacation? Often, there would be so many of them that people around them couldn’t see the action. If you had a recorder, you could watch it later, but there was no such luck for us non-technical types who preferred to visit our amusement parks unencumbered by paraphernalia.

People rarely make photo albums anymore, preferring to keep thousands of pictures on their computer or phone. In an attempt to keep this tradition alive, I think “scrap booking” was invented. This takes so long to do, with lots of thought, preparation, and money needed, that it may be unfair to call it a photo album.

We used to carry a small amount of change with us in case we needed to make a phone call at a “phone booth”. Now, there is nary a phone booth in sight, (although I did spot one in Bermuda that may or may not have worked.) Several times recently when my phone ran out of power and there were no readily available chargers, a phone booth would have come in handy. Instead of being able to call home, I would come home to a concerned Hubby who would chastise me for using my phone so much that there was no power left for a phone call to him!

When I started work many, many years ago, a map book of dissecting streets would provide directions to find my clients. Even using a magnifier, it was often difficult to make out the names of the streets. Now, the glorious GPS has taken over, although it is not so glorious when there is no telephone signal available. Panic-stricken when this happens, my ability to find homes located in rural areas has diminished. At least the map book could get you somewhere near the sought after location.

We no longer have to “rewind the tape” or even take care of our “floppy discs.” Returning library books is almost extinct. The newest trend is the use of Amazon Prime or other on-line retailers to purchase items rather than trudging out to the car, driving in traffic to the mall, parking a half mile away from the desired entrance, shopping in vain to find the correct size, and then waiting in a long line to pay for an impulse item not really needed. Brick and mortar retailers have been going out of business everywhere, and it is predicted that whole malls will eventually fizzle away, victims of on-line shopping.

All of this contemplation about things obsolete could make one nostalgic for the past. Which reminds me of Lily Tomlin, the quintessential “switchboard operator” on the television show Laugh In. As she sat there plugging the lines in, she made a call herself. With a snort from her nose, she would say, “One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy” and when the person answered on the other end, she would say, “Is this the person to whom I am speaking?” What an awesome role model she was. I can’t wait for switchboard duty again!