The Evolution of Neurological Wiring
A text dings in my hearing aids. My reflexive reaction is “Oh, crud!” even though it’s apt to be somebody with whom I like to communicate. It’s neither the technology nor the caller that has me flummoxed. It’s the conditioning from waaay back, when phones were attached to walls. There was no caller-ID or automatic answering service, and the ringing apparatus made no distinction between different callers. Almost by definition, calls were interrupting something—unless you happened to be sitting next to the phone in anticipation of a call. Consequently, I’ve been neurologically trained to regard phone calls as intrusions. But intrusions that are ignored at one’s peril.
I knew people who could ignore the ringing telephone, but they were few and far between—and I was not one of them. What if it was an emergency? Or what if it was Ed McMahon trying to tell me I had won the sweepstakes?
These days, Ed (…may he rest in peace) could leave a message or send a text. The notion of inconvenience isn’t really a thing with phones. Our devices give us plenty of options to delay a response or outright ignore a call—because we can identify the caller beforehand. But I can’t seem to get my reflexes up to speed.
When I was about eleven, living with my family in a rented two-story house, we had one telephone—anchored to the wall in the living room on the main floor. One day it rang while my father was home alone, upstairs in his bedroom. He scrambled down the staircase to answer it, tripping and breaking his toe en route. He hobbled to the phone in time to catch the call: Wrong number.
Pop limped around for over a week, grousing at whomever it was who had misdialed. He declared that he should have said, “Yeah—This is Joe.” (His name was Richard.) “And who is this?”
Telephone calls caused toes to break, roasts to burn, and bathtubs to overflow. But we were wired to answer. Because it could be important.
So the pattern was to swear first, then pick up the receiver and say, “Hello?” But now, the second step is to check who’s calling. Or just let it go to voicemail.
Sometimes I answer and the call is routed to my hearing aids—which are still plugged into their charger. In my haste to make things right, I push the wrong buttons while babbling to the caller—whom I can’t hear— “Wait, please, l’m working on it…” This adds color to the broad brush of ageism painting me as another dotty old dingbat. Fortunately, thanks to caller ID, this spastic ritual is generally reserved for sympathetic friends. But occasionally it’s the dentist or my carpenter.
I like texting. It’s superior to conversing with a disembodied voice. I do better in writing. But I’m slow—because I’m inclined to proofread.
My innate distaste for the ring of a phone has a protective quality. Some folks reflexively answer phones even when driving. I do not have this reflex because car-phones existed only in James Bond movies when I was young. Phone calls in cars remain unnatural in my world. But still, I must be ever vigilant about other drivers’ instincts to stay connected.
Like last night—when I was a passenger in the vehicle my elderly friend was driving. Normally whenever I text her and she happens to be on the road, I get an automated response that says, “Driving—can’t text.” Sensible.
But last night she answered the phone, and while I watched the road with an eagle eye, she learned—from a friend driving behind us—that her automatic headlights had failed to illuminate. It was, indeed, an emergency. Glad her old-time reflexes took charge.