Once upon a time… in the late 1960’s… in the home of my childhood…there was one black rotary-dial phone on the kitchen counter. As a child, I thought my mom spent too much time on this phone, but at least I always knew where she was. In the early 1970’s this phone was updated to a blue rotary dial phone. It matched our kitchen counters and was a vast improvement in aesthetics. It was like going from corrective shoes to glass slippers.
It wasn’t long before my sister and I required our own private telephone line in our own bedroom. I still remember the number and with a twinkle of pride that it was a pink princess phone. When my sister and I graduated to separate bedrooms, her phone was a blue princess.
My husband and I have raised four daughters in the home of our middle age, where the modus operandi of phone use consists of the portable phone. The portable phone has caused untold frustration in the late 1990’s and I am guessing through the year 2011, when our youngest daughter will graduate from high school. My husband handled the problem of the constantly missing phones in the same way he handled his constantly missing combs. He bought a HUGE bag. Suddenly there was a plethora of combs, in drawers, cupboards, cars, in between the couch cushions; I even found a comb when cleaning under the fridge. My husband’s answer to the never-returned-to-the-cradle phone problem was to keep buying phones. Now there are two portable phones in every one of the five phone locations. Consequently, we just look for more phones, finding the plethora of portable phones in the same places: in between couch cushions, in the car, in drawers, but never under the fridge.
My husband gave each phone a location that prints clearly in the same screen that identifies the caller. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time replacing these phones in their proper location. In theory, it was a good idea: every phone in its place, every place with a phone. At first, it bothered my husband to find the phone that read “basement” in the location, “master bedroom.” It didn’t take long for him to feel euphoric when there was any phone in a cradle—it didn’t matter where it came from.
Last night we hit an all time low in phone management. Our 13 year old daughter decided to rearrange her bedroom. This included moving her bed. My husband, with resigned defeat, came to tell me that there were 5 phones under Paloma’s bed--and that didn’t include the one I already put back, (when I saw it hiding under her dust ruffle), (before she moved the bed), (earlier that day).
