Amy Lu's View

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to successfully use a phone to communicate with people. No, not with texting, but in actually using the phone to make and receive calls. I used to have conversations with people by using a phone to talk with and listen to them.

I think I even enjoyed it.

This seems remarkable to me now as I currently have a strong dislike for talking on the phone. I almost never talk to people on the phone unless I’m trying to solve a problem or accomplish something like scheduling an appointment or complaining about a missing Instacart bag. The only person I regularly call for personal reasons is my 80-something year old friend, and I get rather stressed about doing it.

It’s also remarkable to me how drastically my use of and attitude towards phones has changed in my lifetime. Obviously, this has largely been driven by technological changes.

When I was a kid, not only did we not have cell phones, we had a party line. This meant that several neighbors shared the same phone line so not only did we not have a phone with us at all times, we couldn’t even be guaranteed we could use our own home phone whenever we wanted without some awkward social negotiation with the neighbors.

I could do a deep dive here on the technology and design of all the different types of phones I’ve experienced in my life–I’ll just say in roughly 40 years of being a phone user I’ve encountered everything from a candelstick phone to my current moto x4. (I AM devoutly anti i-Phone, for admittedly no good reason). Throughout my adult life I have been plagued by sporadic but traumatic stress dreams of trying to use a rotary phone in an emergency and getting to the end of the number and making a mistake and having to start all over.

As a rural kid, I was also limited to who I could call without it being “long-distance.” I only had one friend, my good friend Jennifer, that I could call and not have to worry about wracking up extra charges. Sharing an area code was an instant bond. (My mom was pretty liberal about long distance calls, but still…).

I think I’ve also grown to dislike talking on the phone because of my poor hearing and people not being able to hear me. Between bad cell phone connections and my apparent inability to successfully place a smart phone next to a my face, my phone calls are often a continuous series of “What?!”

My anti-phone orientation was working okay for me, but life in the Times of COVID is causing me to re-think my attitude toward the humble phone call. In some ways, my social life now is more like it was when I was a child on the tundra outside of Augusta, Wisconsin. I can’t take it for granted that I’m actually going to reguarly interact with anyone outside of immediate family (consisting of Chad and the pets) in person.

So I was already thinking about re-thinking my non-use of phones, when I heard about this study of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”: Phone Calls Build Stronger Connections Than Texting. Well, of course. Obvious, but I needed this inspiration to attempt to change my ways.

I’m really struck by this heading in the story: “Phone calls aren’t as awkward as they might seem.” Eurkeka, that’s it–phone calls DO feel terribly awkward now. After going so long without talking to someone on the phone, it just seems really uncomfortable to start now. How do I call someone seemingly out of the blue without scaring them (no, I’m not calling because it’s an emergency or bad news). How in the heck do I actually END a phone call without seeming rude?

But awkwardness (and even inconvenience) seems like a small price to pay for getting to stay connected to people.

I may have better odds of success if I think of phone calls as a Zoom interaction without video. Because strangely enough, I have not had it with online meetings, church, Happy Hours, play rehearsal, etc. In fact, I often prefer being able to do all these things from the comfort of my home (in sweatpants, with alcohol at hand, and I do make liberal use of both the video and audio mute function). And I have now figured out how to make phone calls via my laptop and/or with using earbuds, so hopefully the “What?” factor will be significantly reduced.

So I’m going to try and re-develop my phone conversation muscles. My apologies in advance for any dorkiness around this endeavor (which may include sending you this blog as exposition).