My Musings

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Thursday, January 09, 2003

The New Phone

Most people hate telemarketers, but I love them. I pick up the phone, I hear some random voice asking if a certain Mr. Alex…Dev…Dvoo…Devvvoorrckin is there, I say no, I hang up. Bam, done, two seconds. But heaven forbid it’s that friend of my parents who always seems to call when they’re not home, who calls so often and sounds so sad that I begin to feel guilty for my parents’ neglect of him, and with whom I have spent approximately 37 hours of my life having the “mom and dad ain’t here but I’ll tell ‘em ya called” conversation. Or, even worse, some distant relative who, upon blabbering for five minutes and then finally asking for my parents and then finally learning that they are not available, insists upon talking with me, and who apparently is completely deaf to the fact that my choppy, two-word responses spoken in a flat monotone to every single thing they say are an indication that at that point in my life I wish nothing more than to hang up. And of course there are the phone calls from my parents or grandparents, which I don’t really mind too much (except for when it’s my mom and she insists upon expounding to me in great detail how exactly to prepare dinner that night because she and dad are gonna be late, and painstakingly describes where and how to find every single food item she thinks I may or may not want to eat or consider eating or debate throwing directly into the trashcan, when she knows that I will go to Chipotlé a thousand dinners in a row before I concede to prepare dinner for myself), but which can still be annoying because there’s something in me that just protests against having the peace and quiet of a house all to myself disturbed by forced human interaction.

But this isn’t a rant against phones. This is a rant against a specific new phone that my dad put in the computer room. It’s one of those cheap, plastic five dollar phones that consist of nothing more than a phone and a little tray that you slide the phone into and it beats me how it shuts the phone off. I bought this phone in 7th or 8th grade at a Charity Newsies auction. All I can say regarding this purchase is: screw charity, I want my five bucks back. There used to be a fine, if somewhat old, phone in here that stood on the edge of the small cabinet next to the scanner that we never use. Aside from a cord that was overly prone to tangles and my amazing ability to find ways to knock the phone off its precarious perch and send it crashing to the floor despite the fact that all I ever really do with it is pick up and put down the receiver, it was a good, stouthearted phone that served me well. But apparently my dad decided that it wasn’t stouthearted enough, so he brought up the cheapo phone from its former residence on the edge of the tool table that we never use in the basement and took the old phone away somewhere. The “new” phone now sits on top of the CPU because the cord is too short to put it by the scanner, which means that whenever it rings I have to lean down and carefully, gently, try to pull it out of the damn tray without breaking it. And the phone itself is really uncomfortable to hold, whereas the other one was one of those nice big ones that molds well to your head. So this phone and I had a rocky start.

But that’s not the end of it. Yesterday my dad and I found out that the darn thing doesn’t even work, when my dad called me from his cell phone somewhere to tell me something (shows how great my memory is that I can’t remember where my dad was or what he wanted from me yesterday) and discovered that he could not hear a single flipping thing I said. Well, he could hear me periodically, enough to know that I was there, but not enough to actually have a normal conversation with me. It’s like those old people we all know who can hear everything you say splendidly, but only on the 17th consecutive time you say it. The weird thing is I could hear him fine. Eventually we finished talking and I hung up. Now, a smart person at this point would have taken one of the three cordless phones we have lying around the house and brought it to the computer room so that he could use it the next time somebody called, instead of the one-way plastic piece of crap, something that would have required all of maybe five seconds, but my laziness knows no bounds. I stayed put, and when my uncle from Canada called, I had to use the malfunctioning plastic devil phone in a tray from hell, again. I can’t remember how the conversation went, but I’ll recreate the basic gist of it for you:

(spoken in a flat monotone by Boris) “Hello.”
“Hi Boris!”
etc etc the greeting, hi, hey, howsa goin’, great, good, you?, great, wonderful, fantastic
“Boris, I can’t hear you at all.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”
“Are your parents there?”
“No.”
(long pause)
(the pause continues)
(I begin to get the feeling that my uncle didn’t hear my “no” and thinks that I’m getting my parents)
“They’re not here,” I say.
(long pause)
“They’re not here,” I say again.
(long pause continues)
“Hello?”
(silence)
“Hello?!”
(more silence)
“HELLO!!!!”
“Huh? What?”
“My parents are not home right now.”
“Oh. Is your dad there?”
“Uh…no.”
“May I speak to him please?”
(dumbfounded pause)
“Um, he’s NOT here. I said he WASN’T here.”
“I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”
“Is your mom there?”
“Ummm…no…”
“May I speak to her please?”
“Errr, she’s not, not, NOT here!!”
“Oh. I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”
“Yeah, it’s a bad phone.”

Something like that. Eventually I think my uncle understood somehow that my parents, indeed, were very much not at home, but the phone was not very conducive to his understanding of this immensely important fact.

In addition to not working, this phone also chirps. Whenever somebody picks up the phone, any phone, anywhere in the house, I hear a quick “breep.” Somebody hangs up the phone, “breep.” It’s a really annoying noise. But the worst part—I really hate this—is that the phone breeps right before it’s about to ring. So here’s a typical example of what will happen after school:

Breep. *oh no, is the phone about to ring?!* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. *DAMMIT!* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. Boris glares at the caller ID. *ARG, my mom. Ah, screw it.* RRRRRRRRRRRRRING. *But I really shouldn’t ignore her. She’ll get pissed off later.* Boris picks up the phone.

(spoken in a monotone) “Hello.”
“Hi Boris!”
etc etc the greeting, how was your day, great, great, wonderful.
“Listen, Boris, we’re gonna be a little late tonight…”
Groan.

I hate that breep. It’s like the calm before the storm, or before the plasma grenade in your back yard explodes disintegrating your house and, more importantly, you. If the phone’s gonna ring and interrupt my civ3 game, fine, but I don’t want to know about it in advance; and if I’m gonna have to talk to somebody who’ll make me wish I had just let the answering machine take the call, I don’t want to have to say everything twice. I get enough of that with my grandpa. I mean, I know he’s deaf in one ear, but it’s just too much of a coincidence that he always hears my answers to his questions on precisely the second time I give them. Like this:

Grandpa (in Russian): Boris, how do you pronounce “vacation?”
Boris (speaking slowly, clearly, and loudly): VAY-KAY-SHUN
Grandpa (leaning forward and cupping one hand around the ear): huh??
Boris (speaking quickly, quietly, almost swallowing the word whole: vacation
Grandpa: Ohhh, okay. Vacation. Vacation. Am I saying it right?
Boris: yes, that’s fine.
Grandpa: what??
Boris: YES!!
Grandpa: Ohhh, okay. Thanks. Vacation.

But I’m not trying to complain about my grandpa. I love him. This is my grandpa on my mom’s side, by the way. He’s a cool guy, though he always turns up the TV really loud, so we whenever he’s here we get day-old Russian news blasting through the house. Anyway, what I’m getting to is: dad, I don’t know if there’s any way you could ever possibly be reading this, but if you are, please get the freaking breeping thing out of here. Thanks.

.: posted by Boris 4:25 PM

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