On July 4, 1776, the United States came to be. Then, 100 years later, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call in Boston, Massachusetts. Fast-forward nearly 100 more years after that—to 1974, Stuttgart, Germany—a 6-year-old Army brat (me) was having the first telephone call of my life. I was talking to my gramma in North Carolina, and it was complicated. We were connected by a telephone operator.
For those of you born before the 1990s, operators were needed for international calls. One did not merely dial a number. There was also a weird delay between the speakers, and when you were finished saying what you had to say, you had to say “over,” so the person on the other end of the call knew you were done talking.
By the time we were back in the United States and I got into junior high, the phone was no longer just a way to reach out and touch someone; it was a way to prank people. Nothing like playing practical jokes over the phone on random strangers selected from the telephone book.
By my freshman year of high school, when I discovered boys and dating, the phone became the center of my universe. I would frantically pace the house, dying for my family members to finish their calls in case the boy I had a crush on was trying to call.
You see, back then, when you called someone and they were already talking to someone else on the phone, you got the dreaded busy signal. That irritating sound hindered my love life. With an older sister also in high school, the telephone was a hot commodity at our house.
Then along came call waiting—game changer. Now, if someone was trying to call you, the phone would beep during your call. The way that was supposed to work, at least in my mind, was that my mother would take the incoming call and immediately end her current call, knowing my entire social existence was literally—possibly—on the line. Of course, she simply did not answer the incoming calls. There was no voicemail. I can’t even imagine how many life-altering calls I missed.
Life went on, and I finally got my own telephone, then a pager, then, in the early 2000s, the telephone as we knew it was revolutionized. Cellphones came along. The world would never be the same again. There was no waiting until I got home to see if someone had left a message on my answering machine; people could reach me anywhere, at any time.
Within 10 years, it seemed everyone had a phone in their hand—at the dinner table, even in the movie theater. Telephones have become a substitute for in-person conversations. You can even attend work meetings via phone. Is that what Alexander Graham Bell had in mind on that March day all those decades ago?
What I remember most vividly about that phone call to my gramma when I was 6 is that, as good as it felt to hear her voice, it paled in comparison to one of her hugs or the smell of her Jean Naté perfume mixed with Ben-Gay ointment. The technology designed to help us connect has created a tremendous distance, often from the people to whom we are closest.
An Emmy-nominated anchor/meteorologist/reporter at FOX66 and NBC25, Leslie Toldo recently retired from TV news after a career of over 30 years, nearly 20 in Flint. She is a blogger, writer, wedding and funeral officiant. Born and raised in Baton Rouge, LA, she graduated from the University of Wyoming. An avid kayaker, boater and runner, Leslie lives in Linden with her husband, Ellie the cat and three dogs: Henry, Gus and Lucy.
