the phone

For reasons too numerous and somewhat bizarre to mention the phones in our house are a unique group. They are all interconnected somehow or other with each other, except for the lone ranger on the porch. This phone is a throw back. Back to the time when you could pick up any extension in the house and listen in to a conversation, or could pick up the phone from upstairs and the person downstairs could hang up and you could still talk to the person who called. But in another way entirely, it's this really up to date phone too. Okay up to date by my standards anyway. Because you can see who is calling or even who called that day. And if you answered the other elitist phones, the lone ranger doesn't know that and records their number as well. It's nifty. I may not remember so and so's phone number, they didn't leave a message but they told me they called. I just go to the porch and scan through all the recent numbers and viola or however that French phrase is spelled--there it is! I can also find out those pesky charities that aren't really charities phone numbers. I've been tempted to call the number back, but then I don't like confrontation really, so never mind.

The other thing about the phone on the porch is that the poor thing has no place to hang its--well--self. The cord doesn't quite stretch to the little tables near the couch. So it sits, slumps actually, on the radiator next to the window. It can look out, a perk none of the other phones can do. And on a nice day, when the window is open a breeze ruffles through and caresses it's handset. But some days I think it looks somehow forlorn, sitting all askew on the radiator.

And another thing about this phone is the ability to hear on it better than any of the other pieces of plastic in the house. HA! You thought I was going to curse, didn't you? Well, I almost did. But this rebel without a seat is handy for listening to my son far away, my sister not as far away and alas, those pesky not quite for real charities I mentioned before. I like this phone's rugged individuality. I wish the rest of the phones in the house would take it's example. But they are hopelessly enslaved by the master of the house, who has tinkered with their wires.

Most days I sit on the porch at the end of the day either reading, writing or watching TV waiting for my husband to call and let me know he would like a ride home from the train station. I try to answer on this phone as much as possible. Who wouldn't like to hear better? And knowing the physical impossibility of that idea, who wouldn't want to be on the one piece of equipment that makes you feel like it really is a possibility?

So I write about the phone on the radiator today as I wait for the master of the phones to call. Ring on oh faithful servant, ring on!