2-4-6-8 How do we communicate?

[blogcutter]

When my paternal grandmother died, I was around nine and we got the news via telegram. About a decade later, my other grandmother died and the news came via telephone, which in those days was a stationary, wired device located in a specific, usually common area of the home such as a hallway.

Back then, those two methods of communication were the most effective ways of conveying important news quickly, if not quite instantaneously, although only the telephone call was interactive. And if the deaths or other important events occurred in another country and another time zone, that could be a consideration as well. Getting a phone call at an unusual time of day or night was generally a clear indication that it must be important. Spam calls and scammers were not so prevalent in those days and overseas calls were expensive, not to be undertaken lightly.

My brother would have turned 79 today, but he died in the summer of 2004, also overseas. I learned the news via a local telephone call from one of our sisters, but she was informed at home in person, after being tracked down through Interpol. The three of us then flew overseas to plan his funeral and piece together what we could of the rest of the story. That story is still incomplete to this day.

Not all important news is bad news, of course. I learned of the birth of my first grandchild via a late-night phone call, and of the birth of my third one via a fairly early morning one, having hosted young grandchildren nos. 1 and 2 the previous day and night. News of the birth of my first nephew, 2 or 3 decades earlier, was also conveyed via a late-night phone call.

I don't remember exactly when we got an answering machine, let alone useful features like call-display (which nowadays is unreliable anyway as numbers are often spoofed), although I do recall getting cell phones in the early-to-mid 1990s. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with them, and the one I use now is still a very basic model.

I do like e-mail, though, because it's easy to properly think through a message, save it and come back and revisit or edit it, and add any necessary attachments before sending it. When our daughter went away to university, it was a good way to communicate because we could keep in touch with her without being overly intrusive or making her feel we were breathing down her neck or cramping her style. The message would reach her, she'd answer whenever she was free. Phone calls were still better for really important news, of course, but by that time we had answering machines and could at least say "Please call back as soon as you can!"

I dislike texting and social media. I have a LinkedIn account that I use every once in a while, and occasionally encounter people I haven't seen or heard from in years. I sometimes wonder what happened to all the penpals I exchanged letters with when I was in my pre-teens and throughout my teens. Nowadays, many folks say the postal service is irrelevant. I say "Keep those cards and letters coming!"

Then there's blogging. I do like to blog when there's something on my mind. But that's another blogpost for another day!

Comments

[sabotabby]

Huh, very generational. I have always gotten bad news through the phone, to the point where I have an anxiety reaction to the phone ringing at all. Not that I'd prefer text. I feel like email is the best for bad news, if you can't deliver it in person.