I really don’t understand why anyone would want to have one of those call-waiting services on their mobile. I mean to me that is just torture. It’s bad enough having to deal with one phone call at a time let alone two or three. Now-a-days it seems people are just terrified of being unavailable for two minutes. But why? Have the seven deadly sins turned into eight with the new one being absence?
These days there are so many ways to get hold of a person. You can email them, text them, page them, call their home, call their work, call their mobile, leaving behind a trail of messages as you go along so when they check them they can tell exactly when and how you had tried to contact them (working your way through the world of technology like a fat slug that has visited through the night, adorning the carpet with its slime while making its way from the cat flap towards the leftover cat food).
One would think that having all these options would be quite satisfactory to a person. But oh no they still want more. What if they are, god forbid, out in the street without access to their email, have forgotten their pager at home and are on the phone to someone? What if someone else wants to contact them at that precise moment and they can’t? Surely for committing such a great sin they will be sent straight to hell with the likes of my husband who does not even have a mobile and me, the sinner of all sinners who sometimes hears the phone ring but lets the answer phone get it; sacrilege! So what is one to do in a situation like that? The answer is Call-waiting Service. So ok that’s fine. Get the service. I’m not one of those people that think everyone should think and live like them. See, I’m a reasonable person. While you get angry with me for taking a day to answer your email, I can live with your availability disorder and your crazy, talking-to-me-and-three-other-people-at-once-on-your-mobile-while-haggling-with-the-busdriver-over-your-fare-and-also-having-a-right-go-at-the-little-old-lady-looking-for-her-senior-citizen-bus-pass-in-her-purse (yes I know, she should have done that while she was waiting in the bus stop instead of just standing there making baby-faces at her poodle) thing. Yes I can live with all that and maybe even find it quite amusing sometimes to get a glimpse into your crazy existence. It’s all good and well if I’m the one who has called you and caught you in the middle of a phone-frenzy. But I have to draw the line somewhere and that is when you are the one that has called me.
So I’m sitting at home, minding my own business, watching a squirrel watching two crows watching a magpie (or whatever it is that I happen to be doing, something pretty important no doubt) and you ring me, and I answer! Then halfway through the conversation you say, ‘Sorry, I have another phone call. I’ll be back in a second.’ And I shout, ‘You put me on hold and I swear I’m gonna come over right now and smash that pretty little phone of yours into pieces while laughing out loud as it pathetically pleads with me; squeaking its ridiculous ring tones one after another for one last time.’ But unfortunately you’ve gone before I have even started my shouting (not because I was slow in my response but because for some reason when you hear that phone ring, you immediately turn into a robot that is deaf and blind to all that is happening around her in the world with only one mission, ‘Must get that phone’) and so I don’t even get the satisfaction of hearing you cry because I have insulted your mobile. Meanwhile, the crows, the magpie and the squirrel have dispersed and I’m left standing there looking like an idiot staring into nothingness. Why do you do this to me?