Before The Cell Phone And Internet

Some of my readers will remember the world as it existed before the advent of the internet and the cell phone in the 1990s. Those who don’t will have missed out on what the English poet Thomas Hood called, “the light of other days.”

To remember the “old days” with nostalgia is always an exercise fraught with the perils of hypocrisy, selective insight, narrow vision and patronizing, irritating discourse. I am always aware that the phrase, “when I was your age,” is usually met with an inward yawn by the generous young person and by a curse uttered under the breath by those not so generous.

My readers therefore will have to treat this essay as simply a record of my own observations and views - and you can then see and choose for yourself the era you would rather live in (if you had the choice, of course). For my young readers (those about 30 years old and below), I wish to paint a true and vivid picture of a world you have never experienced, without being judgmental or patronizing about the present world and your choices.

Before the internet and cell phone, there was no texting and no email.

If you were in love and in high school, you waited for the wired telephone to ring - and then you would dash off like a dart to get to the phone before your parents did! You would try and get your lover to call when your parents were away, of course, but that did not always work.

When you were a university student and you said goodbye to your lover at the airport or train or bus station, you had to wait at least until she reached her destination. Long distance telephone calls were expensive and as students, we did not have much money. We would have to be patient - but as the celebrated 13th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians proclaims, “love is patient, love is kind” The wait, the surging expectation, the racing heartbeat, the sleepless night, the distracted mind - all these served to immeasurably heighten and enhance the excitement when the call did finally come.

Friends and relatives would be circumspect and wary of calling the wired telephone after supper, since the entire family could we awoken by the shrill monotone of the telephone’s ring.

For very similar reasons, even a mean boss would desist from calling you after a certain time and since there was no texting, you could not be alerted to an incoming call!

All this had the simple effect of you being called far less often and for mostly far more important reasons than in the age of the cell phone.

When you declared your love to your lover over the wired telephone, or if you were seized by a fit of jealousy or had quarrelled over what had seemed to you to be very important indeed, there was no way of knowing how she felt or thought about you, about your quarrel with her, about whether you had gone too far (or not far enough), or indeed whether she was thinking of you at all! No flurry of texts would be exchanged and no emojis. You would have to wait until you met again in person - or at least until the next phone call. But perhaps we kissed (or kissed and made up) much more than in the present age of the cell phone.

Not having email meant that there was no “inbox” - only a post box to which you would have to physically post your letters and a letter box, from which you collected letters. Generally, we had to have good, cursive hand writing to be understood and appreciated (manual typewriters were typically used only for business!).

If your colleague at work needed to ask you a question or share a message, he could not dash off an email - he would meet you in person or call you on the wired telephone. If he were to write a physical letter to you each time, it would take interminably long to get anything done (and calling upon a colleague to give him/her a message was often an excuse to get off one’s desk and take a walk to his/her office to have a chat). The practical result was far fewer letters - and more meaningful ones.

We associated the handwriting of our lovers, relatives, friends (and enemies) with the person behind the pen - so much so indeed, that by the very cover of the letter, we could identify its author. Once again, the eager expectation of the wait and the crisp, urgent tearing open of the letter made for an experience at once exciting and varied and unique. It also made it possible to kiss a letter, your lips lingering on its words, or to keep it under your pillow (how could you do this with an email?)

If you had an appointment to meet your friend, father, colleague or lover somewhere at a particular time and the other party did not show up, you might be able to call the wired telephone - but sometimes you had to go home and sleep over being stood up. There was no possibility of exchanging exasperated, angry or disappointed words by text that night. The next morning was another day - and often cooler heads prevailed.

I wrote a poem a few months ago in which I try to convey to the reader the utter incapability of the digital world to understand or capture or encompass the things that belong to the soul. In the poem, I am clearly “lost” - but refuse to countenance my cell phone or its map or the weather that it updates every hour; or to “text” my friends.

It is one of the poems in my book of poems, To A Nurse Friend Weeping, published in 2021. Here it is for you:

ON REFUSING TO COUNTENANCE MY CELL-PHONE

No, no, I don’t want to know -

I want to feel the hoarfrost grow

to silvery grey upon my sleeve

and freeze my lips with longing.

My lips had hers warm and wet,

when our urgent bodies met.

Our flesh felt taut and hard and soft

and flayed the cringing bed.

I’ve just hushed her curtains closed

and stepped into starlight stored

for a million years

in twinkling spheres.

And swift on stones like feathers now

my soles fly like a swallow 

lost in song - while tears stream hot

against the shivering skies.

And could I for once get lost -

since I do know the cost

of wandering these half-lit streets

without a glowing map?

And if pricked, bleed a bit

under my white-pressed kit,

and feel pain like burning coal

upon my trembling breast?

And really, really I do not wish to know

How the terrors of this night might grow

in the next few, fleeting hours -

(so much colder, on the weather app.)

And why must my friends my evening learn

instantly? They should rather earn

the prize of guessing where I was -

or what we did within.

Long now the night of the wandering soul,

my feet ache and my walk a leisured stroll,

on pavements raw and tender,

but screaming triumph to my toes!

I pass the streetlights one by one,

grey upon black and the night is done;

and oh I see her curtain drawn -

and my flowers upon her window.