Starting Over

Like it or not, the demise of my handheld device on Thursday marked the end of an era. I procured my first smart phone — that’s what we called them then — to work on a political campaign in 2012. When the technician told me last week he could not recover my files or contacts because of the way the phone failed, I thought for a minute and walked away from all that. I don’t feel better, yet I am free.

What burned me particularly is my back up — the contact files on Microsoft Outlook — had wiped all the phone numbers there as well when I upgraded to the online version. I guess I’ll find out to whom I want to speak going forward. A main loss is recognizing who might be calling. Just like that, an era of telephony was over.

My spouse and I scheduled a day to go through papers and came upon a stack of clippings from when my father-in-law was installing rotary dial telephones around Iowa and Illinois in the 1950s. He lived in a small trailer, which he hauled around to Martelle, Marengo, and other less populous towns. He helped usher in a new era of rotary dial telephones. The family revisits this story often.

I don’t have much recollection of using the telephone in the 1950s. In fact, the telephone was not that important to my life, outside work, into the late 1990s when I got a flip phone to carry with me while traveling. I installed telephones in several places I lived during the interim, including in Germany where I seldom used it because the rates were so expensive. We used home telephones mostly for calling family and friends, and for staying in touch with work.

While wireless telephony has its roots in the 19th Century, what we called cell phones came into their own around 2000 when I got my flip phone. I could take a photograph and text it to someone else, in addition to talking to them on a call. Freeing myself from wired infrastructure was revolutionary. The smart phone, with its instant access to the internet was another wireless development that changed how we interact with the world.

It will be straight up work to rebuild my important contacts. In a way, being free from all the telephone history is a positive. In my remaining seasons on Earth is will mean a less cluttered life. Damn! Like many things, I just wasn’t prepared for a change.