First of, before it gets any more “tomorrow” than it already is, I’ll throw a Happy Birthday to Kelly Clarkson out on the web. It’s not gonna hurt anyone, not even my ego. Here’s to you and your music, KC, and to me making it to as many of your shows as possible in the future. *raises virtual shot of Bailey’s* So… Happy Birthday, Kelly!
Secondly, I wanted to link this in. I’ve always loved South Park, despite the often crude humour, because underneath it all there’s always a serious topic on debate. And it’s witty.
And this came along at a time when I have been feeling the same ever since I joined up (grudgingly so… peer pressure SUCKS!!).
I’ve even started missing out on events because modifications of date and time were only posted on F***book by friends. What happened to phone, or at least emailing, people?
… say, that actually looks cool. I’m gonna start calling it F***book from now on. Because unnecessary censorship is always fun.
For example:
Looking at it, I think my post does actually have a common theme – communication.
There’s a birthday wish to a person whose (mostly indirect) influence on my life I could not have guessed less than five years ago.
There’s a rant about the new tech wonder that aims to bring us together closer, faster, easier… but like any technology, it’s just a tool that augments the skills you already have. So if you’re a natural at being lonely, the 4567 people on your list that ignore you will only make you feel more so. I don’t want to lose the notion of “friend” by adding random people to a list… I want to keep it for what it was meant to signify – someone you can (and want to) talk to, who you share more than one common interest with, and someone you can actually trust and trusts you back. I made my friends the old-fashioned, hard way, but guess what – they won’t disappear from my life if the community server fails.
Then there was a video about mis-communication – that one I mostly picked because it’s funny. (Oh come on, I’ve never been able to play Debbie Downer all the way through.)
And then… there’s the little story below. I got it in a chain e-mail of all places… yes, I’m that person that always breaks the chain unless it’s actually really inspiring – I should have had so much bad luck coming my way by now, it’s a wonder I’m still alive and writing. But this one I felt like having with a cup of tea, ’cause it’s food for thought. (I’m having to put this back into English, so I hope not that much got lost in translation…)
When I was a kid, my dad got one of the first telephone devices in the neighborhood. I remember it well, that little shiny wooden box, mounted on the wall, the shiny receiver hanging on its side. I was still too young to reach it, but I always listened in awe to my mother talking into it.
Then I discovered that somewhere inside this machine lived an amazing person. Her name was Operator and there was nothing in this world that she didn’t know. Operator could tell you anyone’s number - and the exact time, to boot.
My experience with this genie in a bottle started one day while mom was visiting a neighbor and I was playing around with the toolbox in the basement. I hit my finger with the hammer. The pain was terrible and there was nobody around to sympathize. I ran around the house, sucking on my swollen finger, until I reached the staircase.
The telephone! I quickly dragged a chair from the living-room into the hallway, climbed on it, picked up the receiver and put it to my ear. “Operator!” I cried into the microphone above my head. After a couple of clicks, a low and clear voice reached me: “Operator.”
“I hurt my finger…” I sniffed into the telephone, and burst into tears now that I had an audience.
“Is your mommy not home?” the question followed.
“There’s nobody home but me…” I stammered.
“Are you bleeding?” the voice asked.
“No”, I answered. “I hit it with a hammer and it really, really hurts…”
“Can you open the ice box?” she asked. I said I could. “Then take out a bit of ice and keep it on your finger”, said the voice.
After that I started calling on Operator for any and everything. I asked for help with my geography lesson and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math homework. She told me the squirrel I’d caught in the park the day before ate berries and nuts.
Then came the day our pet canary, Petey, died. I called Operator and told her the sad news. She listened and started telling me the things grown-ups usually say to children to soothe them. I asked, “Why do birds, who sing so beautifully and bring so much joy to people, have to end up in a little pile of feathers at the bottom of a cage?”
I think she understood my worry, because she said softly, “Wayne, always remember there are other worlds to sing in.”
Then, another time, “Operator!”
“Operator”, answered the familiar voice.
“How do you spell FIX?”
All this was happening in a small Northwestern Pacific town. When I was nine, we moved across the country to Boston. I really missed my friend… Operator was left in that wooden mahogany box in our old house. I never tried calling the operator on the shiny modern phone of our new home.
I’d become a teenager but the memory of those childhood conversations haunted me everywhere… Often, in moments of uncertainty and helplessness, I remembered the serenity and safety of those old times. I now appreciated how patient and kind-hearted she must have been, to spend so much time on a small boy like me.
A few years later, I went back West, this time for college. I had a half-hour layover in Seattle. I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with my sister, who had been living here for a while. Then, without thinking, I dialed the operator number for our home town and said, “Operator!”
Miraculously, I heard the same low, clear voice that I knew so well. “Operator.”
I hadn’t planned on it, but I heard myself saying, “Can you tell me, how do you spell FIX?”
There was a long pause. Then the soft voice answered, “I think your little finger is healed by now.”
I laughed. “So it really is you”, I said. “I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me back then.”
“And I wonder”, she said, “if you have any idea how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children and I was looking forward to hearing you every day…”
I told her how much I’d thought about her over the years and asked her if I could call her again when I came to visit my sister.
“Anytime”, she said. “Just ask for Sally.”
I came back to Seattle three months later. Another operator answered and I asked for Sally.
“Are you a friend?” she asked.
“Yes, a very old friend… Wayne.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this”, she said. “Sally only worked here part-time in the past few years, because she was sick. She died five weeks ago.”
Before I hung up, she said “Wait a minute, did you say your name was Wayne?”
“Yeah”, I answered.
“Well, Sally left a message for you… She wrote it down in case you’d call. I’ll read it to you.”
Her message was, “Tell him there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean.”
I thanked her and hung up. I did know what Sally meant.
Never underestimate the impression you made on somebody else.
