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不知道你是否曾有过这样的经历：一家人围在一部电话旁，等待着远方亲人的消息；电话簿中记下班里那个女孩的电话号码，忐忑拨通后发现接听的却不是她；买张电话卡冲进路边的电话亭，拨下那串背得烂熟的号码……这些曾是好几代人的共同回忆。但在几乎人手一部手机的今天，固定电话似乎成了家中的多余之物。
We’ve had the same landline for almost 40 years， since before anyone called it a “landline，” and it’s hard to give it up. Our phone number would be floating out there in space somewhere， whimpering like a dog that got left behind.2 And we have a cool number. It’s got two zeros in it， just like my childhood phone number， only without the stigma3. Nobody liked to dial zeros back in the 1950s， when we all had rotary phones4. It took too much work， and if you were in a hurry your finger might slip out of the little hole before you got it all the way around，5 and then you’d have to start over. But by the time we got the landline， all you had to do was push a button.
Still， this phone is annoying. There’s hardly ever anybody on the other end of it anymore that I want to talk to. Instead it’s someone telling me there’s nothing wrong with my credit card. Or someone who wants to know how old my roof is， or if I’d like to take a short survey. It’s nobody I know.
One of the reasons people say you should keep the landline is that the connection is better， and you might want it for certain conversations. Which just goes to show how much we’ve forgotten about what a real phone—one with a cord6—should sound like.
They sounded wonderful. When direct long-distance dialing first became available， my mom would call her brother in North Dakota， and they’d spend an exhilarating minute telling each other they sounded as if they were in the next room.7 Then they’d hang up8. And it was true. People did sound as though they were in the next room.
That’s because their voices didn’t have to guess where they were going. They got to travel inside honest-to-goodness enclosed wires the whole way， completely out of the weather， and they’d come out all creamy on the receiving end.9 Nowadays your voice has to find its way through the air and bump into mosquitoes and hurricanes and such， and by the time it gets to your friend’s phone it sounds as though it’s coming from the bottom of a box of crackers.10
But it’s considered an improvement because we don’t have to be tethered11 to a wall， even though that wouldn’t be the worst idea for a lot of us.
Anyway， back then， if you heard a little crackle on your phone， you’d call up The Phone Company and they’d send out some guy with his name stitched on his shirt to polish it up for you free of charge.12 The wires were all tucked away inside the house through one neatly caulked hole in the siding.13 Now the landline brings in crunchy noises， like the sound of squirrels chewing.14 You don’t report it as long as you can still make out the conversation， because it will cost you a hundred bucks to have some repairman poke a hole inside your house.15 If you can keep him outside， he’ll haul out a bunch of new wire and staple it in careless loops to the side of your house like bunting.16 But it does sound marginally better than the cellphone， because there’s no delay.17
We’ve had the same landline for almost 40 years， since before anyone called it a “landline，” and it’s hard to give it up. Our phone number would be floating out there in space somewhere， whimpering like a dog that got left behind.2 And we have a cool number. It’s got two zeros in it， just like my childhood phone number， only without the stigma3. Nobody liked to dial zeros back in the 1950s， when we all had rotary phones4. It took too much work， and if you were in a hurry your finger might slip out of the little hole before you got it all the way around，5 and then you’d have to start over. But by the time we got the landline， all you had to do was push a button.
Still， this phone is annoying. There’s hardly ever anybody on the other end of it anymore that I want to talk to. Instead it’s someone telling me there’s nothing wrong with my credit card. Or someone who wants to know how old my roof is， or if I’d like to take a short survey. It’s nobody I know.
One of the reasons people say you should keep the landline is that the connection is better， and you might want it for certain conversations. Which just goes to show how much we’ve forgotten about what a real phone—one with a cord6—should sound like.
They sounded wonderful. When direct long-distance dialing first became available， my mom would call her brother in North Dakota， and they’d spend an exhilarating minute telling each other they sounded as if they were in the next room.7 Then they’d hang up8. And it was true. People did sound as though they were in the next room.
That’s because their voices didn’t have to guess where they were going. They got to travel inside honest-to-goodness enclosed wires the whole way， completely out of the weather， and they’d come out all creamy on the receiving end.9 Nowadays your voice has to find its way through the air and bump into mosquitoes and hurricanes and such， and by the time it gets to your friend’s phone it sounds as though it’s coming from the bottom of a box of crackers.10
But it’s considered an improvement because we don’t have to be tethered11 to a wall， even though that wouldn’t be the worst idea for a lot of us.
Anyway， back then， if you heard a little crackle on your phone， you’d call up The Phone Company and they’d send out some guy with his name stitched on his shirt to polish it up for you free of charge.12 The wires were all tucked away inside the house through one neatly caulked hole in the siding.13 Now the landline brings in crunchy noises， like the sound of squirrels chewing.14 You don’t report it as long as you can still make out the conversation， because it will cost you a hundred bucks to have some repairman poke a hole inside your house.15 If you can keep him outside， he’ll haul out a bunch of new wire and staple it in careless loops to the side of your house like bunting.16 But it does sound marginally better than the cellphone， because there’s no delay.17