As compared to most people, I have a different relationship to phones generally, and think that it’s because I’m a Gen Xer. Mine rang at 7:20 and I was just slightly late as it went to VM. I was still in bed due to the nice overcast morning. (I don’t have my cell anywhere near me at night.) I like to talk on the phone. In fact, if I talk on the phone on a weekend day, I don’t have to see or talk to anyone for the rest of the day and still feel happy.

The actor Molly Ringwald in “16 Candles” spends evenings talking on the phone. It’s a thing in that movie that she has a phone in her room with a dedicated phone number.

I, myself, used to stretch the cord through the whole house into my room when I was twelve in one of the rentals that we lived in. I could talk on the phone in private in my room.

I think that now people use phones to scroll through extremely short videos. It’s little dopamine hits as they laugh or smile. It’s being chained to a feed of hits to the reward center in the brain. In contrast, my belief is that talking on the phone involves a connection to another person. I simply like having conversations on a phone. I like the weight of a cordless phone, and have one with a spiral cord in my bedroom. (I do have the ringer off on that one.)

What do you think? Are you confused by the picture in this entry?