MY Land Line World

As an old fossil who disdains most technology because, well, it's too new for me and will change my old habits (that I like) too much, I am here today to report on one of my favorite old technologies. It's the land line telephone. Remember that? Since I have never had, nor will I ever have a cell phone, the land line is still as useful to me today as it was in the past. That is, I use a phone when I have to, nothing more or less. it is not an amusement, not an addition and  the fewer rings form it I here each day the better.

My nightmare is what will happen to me if I don't die before the land line phone does? Oh well, no need to worry too much about that. I will probably die from shock if the land line passes away before I do. That's because I refuse to enter the insipid, idiotic world of cell phones.

Here's the state of the land line phone in my own small world. I have the two land line phones in my three story house. If I don't reach one before the ring tone stops, I rejoice with the admonition that, "If it was important the person will call again". If not, then I escaped being a Pavlov dog responding to a ring tone. I smile and picture the cell phone addicts who race to their phones with every ring or ping and feel superior in some small way.

Attached to one of my land line phones is an antique you may have heard of. Yep! I have an answering machine on the phone that filters the nuts from the non nuts, the annoying from the essential. I estimate that I do not return at least 60% of the messaged calls. Most of those are advertisements or request to donate money to some organization. As to the donation harassment, the answer machine and the caller ID is a joy to me. When I see "unknown number" displayed or a number that I do not recognize I never pick up my receiver to answer.

The odds are it is either a donation plea (usually from the same organization I donated to recently, because once you give you are on the donation call list forever) or one of the many phone scams those people in Russia, India or some off shore island robot call direct to fool the person on the other end into forking over money.

Some scammers are even so emboldened to leave a message threat. One very common is the Microsoft support scam. In that one, an Indian accented voice with dozens of other Indian voices toning the same spiel in the backgrounds says if you don't let them take over your computer an unknown virus on it will destroy it. The ruse is the phone microsoft people plant a virus on your computer when you allow them access remotely and continue taking money away from you until you finally realize it's fake. I wonder how anyone can be so gullible to succumb to that obvious fraud. But it must work on some people because it's been on going now for many years.

I am  ridiculed by cell addicts every day as to "How can you survive" without a "cell". Very well, thank you. The few times that I am inconvenienced by not having access to a phone in a situation when it would be helpful to have one, I remind myself of how pathetic a cell addict is, how out of touch with life those "in touch" with cell phone people really are. And I say a little prayer that soon, the Microsoft scam crew will connect them and disable their phone...