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Telephone Trials
Michelle Hanson writes:
We have five telephones in our house. The main one, cordless, two extensions, one pay phone for the daughter and her chums and on the ordinary phones we have call-waiting, answerphone and call-barring.
We have grasped these facilities with varying degrees of skill. Daughter takes to it like a duck to water. I can manage if I put my mind to it, but my mother, age 92, has a frightful battle with the new technology. She cannot for the life of her work call-waiting. We have tried a practise run through - I call from the fax or the pay phone, while she is chatting to one of her chums so she can recognise the pips, but she can't even hear them. Because her chums are yapping loudly and probably having a row about their last bridge game. She might get in a flap, pressing the buttons and end up cutting off the friend, but we have never got that far.
Mother vs Daughter
Daughter luckily attends to the pips - she has to. It is most likely one of her friends "pipping", but if it is for me she is rather brusque. And when she returns to her own chat about things of great import, like boys, clothes, shopping and who's going out with who, my message may easily be forgotten.
Daughter is also inclined to snatch up the phone if she is in reach. It is bound to be for her. She is the most popular.
Ring, ring - rings her upstairs pay-phone. She rushes upstairs. Ring, ring - rings the downstairs phone. Her caller has given up on the upstairs phone just as she just reached it, thinks she is out and has rung downstairs to give me, her Mummy, a message. Daughter charges down again: "It's for me," she screams bossily. "Don't answer it. Don't!" Imagine if after all that charging up and down it's for me or her Grandma? Naturally daughter is browned off. "It's for you." she says with tremendous scorn.
听
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