BY CHRIS MILLSPAUGH
When did it all start going wrong, I ask you. When did our focus for loftier ideals start to diminish? Why did we start looking down instead of up? I know! It was the beginning of cellphones.
In 1987, I began work as a telemarketing manager and office director for the Radio Call company in New York City. Radio Call was formerly an answering call service based in Melville, Long Island, which took messages for businesses and participating private clients for the city and the surrounding areas of Long Island.
In 1986, they decided to get into the “beeper” business to assist hospitals and their staff by alerting them that they had a call to answer and displaying the phone number on their beeper, which was worn on their belt. It worked well for the professional crowd, but the profits were low—too low to sustain a business. And then, the professional “crack” dealers of New York City got on board with “beepers” and the business boomed overnight.
During my first month at work, I greeted an elderly man from Washington Heights who had come to purchase a “beeper” and sign up for the monthly service. I asked how he would like to purchase it and he produced a grocery sack full of five-dollar bills and showed me. As the business took off, Radio Call reached an agreement with Motorola to sell their first cellphones. The original phones were bulky, heavy and ugly but they opened the door for everyone to have their own personal phone service in their own pocket. Through the next few years, the popular, thin, sleek smartphones evolved and chaos erupted throughout the world. Everyone started looking down at their phone instead of at each other. No one looked up anymore to enjoy the sky and the world in general.
I can’t count the number of times I responded to someone who said “hello” to me and I said “hi” right back. They would give me an incredulous look and say, “I was talking on my phone.” I would then say, “No, you were saying ‘hello’ to me!” Then, they would say, “No, I wasn’t. I was talkin’ to my phone!”
“I’m talkin’ here!”
People were talking out loud but they weren’t talkin’ to you! People became introverted and dealt only with their phone and its many messages. People stopped talking to each other and suddenly all was lost.
Now, in 2020, the year that will live in infamy, everyone has a smartphone. Everyone, that is, except for me. I’m a landline guy and proud of it. When everyone is looking down, I’m looking up! I have hope! Even if Trump builds a golf course and the Trump Tower Lodge in Stanley, I will carry on and notice the sky and the birds and the wonders of nature right here in our beloved Wood River Valley.
The only possible answer is to get rid of your cellphone and join the human race again!
Nice talking to you.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Millspaugh lives in a log cabin with his cat, Myles; is retired; does absolutely nothing; and is tied to a landline.