Friday Five

1. Do you like talking on the phone? Why or why not?I don’t mind talking on the phone. But it’s not the lifeline it was when I was a teenager.

2. Who is the last person you talked to on the phone?The police. Nothing personal. Just business.

3. About how many telephones do you have at home?3 - 4 if I plug in the one in my bedroom. #4 explains why I tend to keep it unplugged.

4. Have you encountered anyone who has really bad phone manners? What happened?Lots of people at work. (You’d think people would be nicer when calling a church!) The best, though, was at home. We get a lot of calls at odd hours from the kid’s friends. I don’t think some of these young people realize that they are calling a family phone and not a private line in the girls’ rooms. One night someone called at about 12:30 am looking for Fran and Bridget, who were still out with friends. The caller had the nerve to ask me to look outside and see if there was anyone interesting just hanging around in the cul-de-sac. The absurd part was that I complied and told him politely that nothing was happening.

5. Would you rather pick up the phone and call someone or write them an e-mail or a letter? Why or why not?Call. Which is a shame because I talk to Embot and my sister, for example, all the time. By the time I graduated from college, I had several shoeboxes of letters from my parents. I think Em has a couple of Valentines and Halloween cards that we made......no lengthy written correspondence. Now that my parents are gone I treasure the letters that they wrote to me. And I found all the letters I wrote home among their things. Em and I have no such legacy. But we do yack a lot....