Bells Aren't Ringing

We’ve been having trouble with our phone recently, so I called in a repairman. He didn’t seem to know what the problem was, but he brought me a questionnaire to fill out so I’d have something to do while the phone was out of commission. There were a lot of questions on this list, most of them designed to find out whether we were receiving courteous service.

There are some things that just can’t be covered by a simple yes or no answer, so I sat down and wrote the telephone company the following letter:

Dear Sirs:

The courtesy of your company is legion, and I would be the last to quarrel with a policy of politeness to the paying public. What I would like to suggest, however, is that in the midst of all this gallantry, you not lose sight of the object of the exercise, which is to provide adequate telephone service to your customers.

Mind you, I’m not really complaining about getting calls from people asking for Ruthie or the Lalonde Funeral Home. Some of my best friends were once wrong numbers.

And I don’t really mind getting the occasional crossed wire and listening in on someone else’s conversation. It helps while away many a boring afternoon when the TV breaks down and I can’t watch my favorite soap operas.

And I think it’s absolutely charming of your repairman to show me brochures of your new push-button model in fourteen glorious colors, and to ask solicitously if the ring on my present phone isn’t too loud.

But my mind has always had a practical turn, and at the moment I’m far more concerned with the fact that we haven’t had a ring of any volume on that phone for the past twelve hours.

Actually, if I stopped to think about it, I’d realize that a telephone out of commission is a blessing not entirely in disguise. As a matter of fact, it can be heaven when you have a demanding editor, four talkative kids and a husband whose clients think he practises law only when he’s sitting at the dinner table.

I admit a working phone can cause some tension, particularly when everybody’s expecting an important call at the same time. But fighting for the phone every time it rings will probably be excellent training if the kids should ever decide to join the marines or the backfield of the Chicago Bears.

The problem is, the person being called on the phone never answers it. He’s always at the office, or in school or standing there in a trance with the stereo on full blast, while you dash in from the garden trailing mud and manure to answer it on the fourteenth ring.

None of these calls is ever for me. They’re for my husband, or the children, or a maid we once had in 1963, or my neighbor, whose husband keeps calling me to go tell her to get off the damn phone.

My neighbor’s kids begged for a dog, then went off to school all day, leaving the poor beast howling on the front steps. You can do that with a dog. But they’d cart me off to the funny farm if I put the phone outside where I couldn’t hear it ring day and night.

Naturally, I never get to make any outside calls. By the time the line is free, it’s four a.m. and every decent person I know is fast asleep in bed.

However, that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that although I deeply appreciate the polite concern of your operators, linemen and inspectors, I’d much rather hear an impolite dial tone when I pick up the receiver.

Please look into the matter, because I’m seriously considering buying a flock of carrier pigeons. I know they have nasty dispositions, but I hear they get the job done.