|
from Five Two, Five Blue:
My red-haired Ginger was a professional question asker as a child. When she was about three, she rushed into the kitchen one day and gasped.
“Mama, how old do I have to be to be older than my fingers?”
I, whose thirty-five-year-old fingers were covered with cookie dough, had no idea what she was talking about. “What was that question?”
Hands now on hips, she reiterated. “How old do I have to be be to be older than my fingers?” She held up her hands with digits extended.
Ah, yes. Older than your fingers. “That would be eleven,” I replied, counting them off from one to ten. “When you get to be eleven, you’ll
be older than your fingers.”
I’ve been older than my fingers for some time now. Not long ago, one of my young customers proved it. He was ten or eleven years old, and he
was looking for a book. (I sell books.) He couldn’t remember the title and asked if he could give his mom a call. The fancy red rapid-dial, push button, telephone/answering machine which shames my old roll-top desk
was blocked by boxes, so I directed him to the black rotary on the back wall.
“I’m not sure how to do this,” I heard him say.
“You need a phone book?” I asked.
“No. I know my number. It’s this phone I don’t know how to work. I’ve never seen an old-fashioned phone like this.”
A black rotary dial telephone was old-fashioned?
He was a smart kid. It was not a lift-the-handle-and-crank phone. It was a rotary dial. This kid had never seen or used
a rotary phone! I was more amazed than he. I had never taken the time to muse on the rapid-fire advances which have taken place in the telephone industry in the last few
years. Car phones. Cell phones. Answering machines. Faxes. Some of them have been around for a while., but it has only been in the last four or five years that ordinary folks have
acquired telephones that do everything but floss your teeth.
I sat that kid down and told him about Five Two, Five Blue.
Now I want to tell you....
|
