QUESTION:

"You answer me, although I never ask you questions. What am I?"

Remember the home telephone? (That's the answer, BTW.)

How many of you remember it as the central focus of the home- the TV lingering in second place? When it rang, it was loud so it could be heard in every part of the house. It was also attached to a wall. You had to go to it. (This made some private conversations awkward.)

I remember hours passing- my ear hot and painful from pressing it to the earpiece. I remember when 'extensions' made it possible to first drag the extra long line to my room, then getting my own 'socket' put in. Talking! What did we talk about, I and whoever was on the other end? So many words!

I recall laughter- giggles sometimes having to be muffled because the house was asleep. I recall those brief or sometimes prolonged silences- when it was time to go but you hung on. Hearing the other's breath. "You hang up first!" "No, you hang up!"

There was intimacy. The telephone was our only replacement; our stand-in till we could talk face to face again- be it with a lover, loved one or friend. We spoke the same language we spoke when physically together. We could hear each other's emotions.

... This wondrous invention arriving after so many centuries of sending notes publicly or privately. We now could, as a society, converse with the other person in 'real time'. We could carry on where we left off an hour ago and keep going... prolonging the sense of 'togetherness'.

What a wondrous thing it must have seemed, I imagine.

Of course, it eliminated the need for note-sending. So all those love letters and all the sonnets penned during long absences or unfavourable circumstances or love forbidden or indeed tragedies... they faded to obscurity else were condensed to greeting cards; the words already penned for us: "I miss you. You are always in my thoughts." "I am deeply sorry for your loss." "Happy Birthday Grandson!" (Insert name up top and sign off at the bottom- maybe, okay,  we might add a stock line or two. In the case of grandma, insert some money also... Hallmark knew a good thing, right?)

And now... we are writing to each other again- but via text. Written communication has veered away from the intimate and the romantic into the rushed, acronym-filled and emoticon-enhanced 'checking in' going on today. (Some dinosaurs still cling to emails- though emails too have become the new 'unsolicited hawking'... oh yeah, and a new way for Bill Collectors to stalk! LOL.)

I need to confess something here: I've only ever been in a video-call twice; both times with my brother and his young family. Both times feeling awkward and... blustering.

I watch young couples or friends in movies- it looks so damn natural! They go about their chores (like... folding clothes, or tidying up or putting on their make-up or asking which outfit works best) and chat, or eat and chat, or sip some wine or coffee and chat- like it's the most natural of things.

Whether a mile or ten thousand miles apart, there they are, peering into each other's space and chatting as though being in each other's space. (No, I won't mumbo-jumbo here about the perils of VR!)

Because maybe... I want to try that video-call thing for real- I'm not sure. There are moments when frankly, I am sick of punching keys. There's a part of me hankering for more. I've had all the intimacy there's to be had in chat boxes and inboxes. I think, maybe, the way to sustain this thing is to 'take it to the next level' in today's lingo or rather, join the crowd. Do as they do: USE the technology to compensate for almost everything but pure physical connection.

Like right now, as I sit here typing in my pink robe and my bronze fur-trimmed jacket on top because damn, it's so bloody cold and this new room faces South and that's where the Antarctic is spewing bitter winds from! Another would see me, whilst sitting in some sidewalk cafe in shorts and a singlet reading and... laugh at my absurdity! Maybe later, we'd hook up again and... That would be intimacy, yes? That would be as though (almost like) he was sitting opposite and so was I? Or that we were almost IN each other's space?

But there's also a part of me - still with a foot firmly planted in the past - that doesn't want "as though"... doesn't want "almost like"... doesn't want bloody convenience at the expense of losing penned words... There's some of me hankering for love letters and sonnets and undying love described as death- without me... (Is this, too, age-related and if so, fucking seriously? That's what happens to you when the decades pile up?)

... All this new ease and convenience and plethora options though - for not penning words - I want to know where tomorrow's love letter collections will come from and whether they, will instead, be a collection of screenshot exchanges:

A          I luv u (Big red bouquet-of-hearts-emoticon following.)

B          Awwwww (Big-red-heart-with-sparkly-diamonds emoticon

          following.)

A          Laters babe

B          Muah!

A          (Bunch-of-flowers Giff with dorky bloke.)

B          (Giff of woman from the 1920's swooning.)

Yeah... Modern-day romance. 

We, humans, strive for- hell, we strive for everything. The minute that first crude letter was scratched on a piece of stone with another stone... well, here we now are: Reading acronyms and swooning to Giffs. LOL!

Still, though, it's not so much the advances- it is what we have chosen to advance: In that instance, the loss of handwriting. Or if you prefer to view it differently, the convenience of not having to carry paper and pen around... and having to wait for your words to be received and a reply to hopefully arrive. Wait? Who has the bloody time these days? Just whip the phone out and quickly type what you want to say and... get an almost immediate response. Everything terse- because the sight of a huge slab of text... well damn, you gotta read ALL them words?

In another, we took the phone - a once intimate apparatus - and chose to advance it to a computer. Where previously even when the phone went mobile it offered the same intimacy as landlines (you could only call) we added features and conveniences: Texting. Cameras. Social Media. The Internet.

We no longer hold a hot handset to our ear till we fall asleep or reluctantly hang up. (Yes, that's a bloody BAD thing to do with a mobile!) Instead, we hold it in front of us and type. We switch from 'work' to 'private mode' as per incoming message/text beep.

"You answer me, although I never ask you questions. What am I?"

Not the telephone!

It only ever rings these days because of 'work' or unsolicited hawking or... "Where's the bloody money you owe us? Call us back on blah blah and quote reference blah blah urgently!" voice messages because we definitely do not answer those calls!

(The only 'letters' received these days, too, are mostly from 'dinosaur to dinosaur' or 'mega-business to dinosaur' either or both of which have since to catch up with the 'paperless' trend of invoicing. Oh yeah, and Bill Collectors LOL!)

And soon, this also will be superceded.

I understand it is progress and the natural evolution of humanity. I just hate that convenience came at the cost of intimacy. And that now we accept "as though" and "almost like" as... normal?

(I also hate the fact MY 'evolutionary stage' is becoming extinct. There's that.)

Do tell: Do you still call people or hand-write letters? When was the last time you had a prolonged intimate voice-to-voice call or wrote a letter? Else, are you of the new breed? Chatting and carrying on the sharing of every aspect of your lives apart via... video-link?