This phone is off the hook
“What’s that Grandma?” my oldest grandson asked.  I was busy doing laundry so it took me a bit to investigate his question.
“Oh, it’s a phone.”
“A phone?  Doesn’t look like a phone.  How does it work?”
I had an old push-button desk phone in the basement, and it tickled me to think that something so common was so foreign to my young grandson.
I not only showed him how this particular phone worked, I dragged him up to the attic where we had our old rotary phone stored. Why we stored it? I don’t know. Posterity?
He was intrigued for about five minutes as I explained how a rotary phone worked. Since it no longer works, my explanation which I thought would be not only brilliantly educational but exciting, actually was rather boring. Trying to imitate those clicks that you hear in the handset when you dial is less than fascinating.
We are among a shrinking community of people who still have a landline in their house. I insist on keeping ours, mostly because a landline phone does not need charging and I do want to be able to summon help, when and if needed, without worrying whether there is enough battery life left to make a call.
I do have a smart phone.  At least the phone is smart. The owner, not so much.
My son bought the phone for me online.  It does amazing things.
I still think of phones as the means by which you talk to one another. This phone allows you to talk, send typed messages known as texts, videos and startlingly photos of your dinner. I added that last thing because so many people actually take pictures of their food. Why is that?
You can also read and send email and keep up with Facebook.
Your smart phone has answers to almost any question.
For instance, we were wondering who the parents of Medusa were. I know that this doesn’t often come up, but my family just returned from Greece and the grandkids asked the question. Did I have to go to the library and look this up? No, I went to Google and found out that Medusa’s parents were Phorcys and Ceto and that our snake-haired girl had two children, Pegasus and Chrysaor. Remember, this is Greek mythology. Not many individuals have children that are horses. What I’ll do with this information is an unfolding mystery. It took me about five seconds to obtain it.
One thing that isn’t so easy to find is a phone number, unless you pay one of the many phone book sites on the internet. That rubs me the wrong way. You don’t pay for land line phone books. But then, today, those phone books are less than useless without cell phone numbers.
My phone is also a flashlight, a GPS and a metronome and can, with a small addition, take my blood pressure. I can download and read books on this phone. Of course, the typeface is rather tiny and my battery would run out well before I had finished even a quarter of the book … but you can do this on a phone.  Just saying.
When I want to know the time, I look at my phone, which is also a clock and a meteorological prognosticator. I used to use the landline phone to get the time. Dialing 422-3496 would get you the time and temperature.  Does anyone know who the woman in the recording was?
Then the health department provided a line where you could listen to recordings about specific diseases and disorders. A hypochondriac’s paradise. Today you surf over to Web MD or google your symptoms to amass a wealth of useless and annoying-to-your-doctor information.
And, as I mentioned earlier, the smart phone is a camera. Touted as a better-than-average camera, at least by the techies who have reviewed the phone,  I have tried on many occasions to test this out. So far I have a collection of out-of-focus pictures, many of which exist as multiples. I have no idea how that happened.
Yesterday I needed to use my camera to take a picture of our cat that would assist the vet in her diagnosis and treatment of his skin condition. Grandma grabbed her phone, swiped it to the camera and began to take pictures … of herself.  I had no idea that the thing was set on what is known as selfie mode … nor did I have a clue about how to get it to take pictures of our cat.  I did turn it around and try to take a selfie of the cat but, by then, he had moved.
My grandson, who found the rotary phone a mystery, has a watch that is a phone. Apparently, his watch is only a watch and a phone … or is it?  His parents can use their smart phones to track his whereabouts.
And, I have just discovered that youtube can bring up vintage rotary phone sounds, which could more accurately illustrate what I was trying to share with said grandson about that old phone in the attic.
It’s truly amazing when you think about the power of this gadget.  And it is equally amazing that I have only the tiniest understanding of all that it can do.

Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.