Landline in the Kitchen
What are your memories of a landline?
Growing up our landline hung in the kitchen doorway next to the laundry room. Always a long corded phone. With yearly week long power outages we couldn’t be without a corded landline. Talking on the phone was too important.
Adolescent years spent sitting in the kitchen on the phone then retreating to the laundry room when I didn't want my mom to hear.
My friend getting her own phone line in her room and knowing I could never be that cool.
Dialing the local time number just to hear the temperature.
My grandma calling my mother almost nightly for long chats - sometimes stretching the cord out to the back porch for a smoke.
Snow day calls came through that phone every winter - all 4 of us kids in the living room waiting for that ring. Calls from college recruiters. Calls to the doctor.
I still use that number at Safeway a decade after my mother moved.
I loved that landline.
A staple in our home.
Sitting on the ground when the conversation spanned hours.
Call waiting, three way calls!
Landlines brought our generations together - sharing with a whole family, negotiating for more time before hanging up, trusting no one was listening on the other line.
Holding a receiver that perfectly fits everyone’s hand like a pair of magical jeans and squeezing it between your ear and shoulder when you need free hands.
The fear of phone calls fades with a landline. Making frequent use of what never should have become outdated brings comforting healing with every ring.
Tethering us to the past with a spiral cord that no one can help but wrapping through their fingers.
An object doesn’t need to do everything. My husband thinks they are a waste of money when we both have cellular phones.
But where is the romance in an obnoxiously bright flat rectangle that doesn’t fit in anyone’s hands, encourages distraction, is so easily breakable, and gives everyone the ability to interrupt your life at any moment on their whim?
I'm not fighting against cell phones. Yes, most people use them too much. We all know this and yet still people bash the landline.
Coexistence is possible for the cellular and land tied. Romance and practicality never have to out rule each other.
Text your spouse on your way home and call your mother later for a nice long chat on the corded landline in the kitchen.
