Comments on: If You Can’t Talk, Don’t Answer Your Phone! A Writer Rants

By: Sharon

Sharon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:37:12 +0000

Teenagers are just as bad as their parents when it comes to “burning up the phone”. My daughter (she is 20) calls me persistantly until she gets in touch with me. I only answer my cell phone when it’s convenient for me. I go to the gym everyday at the same time and refuse to carry inside my phone. When I return to my car I will have 5 missed calls and they are all from my daughter. Mom’s have to have a life too.

By: Lori F.

Lori F. — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:10:53 +0000

My mother gets really mad if I call her when she is napping. Since I’m not pyschic nor do I have a crystal ball, how was I supposed to know she was sleeping. I don’t get why she answers the phone then if she is napping. I am a nap lover so I definitely do not answer the phone when I am trying to nap. Does it wake me up anyway? Yes. But I usually can go back to sleep when it stops ringing (’cept the other day when my home phone rang 5 times and my cell 3 times in an hour). Anyway, my point is, if I don’t want to be bothered – I don’t answer and simply return calls later.

By: Nancy Nally

Nancy Nally — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:56:32 +0000

glad you got a giggle Anne…let’s just say that some older people have moved with the times more than others. ;)

This discussion is the perfect example of the fact that we have to make technology work for us instead of us becoming prisoner to it!

By: Kathleen L

Kathleen L — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:55:05 +0000

Anne – Yes… Rude to be the person beside the cell phone answerer in the library.

I love the off button. My kids hate it. They think I should be at their beck and call 24/7. They don’t like it when I don’t take my cell phone with me. Maybe they think I will evaporate never to come back and make dinner for them. They think I should be at their beck and call 24/7. They don’t like it when I don’t take my cell phone with me, either. (Because you know they still, at ages, 17, 15, and 12 wait for me to make dinner for them.)
Lori… thanks for the reality check and laugh. I know people are second guessing my sister’s sanity… even more with that thing sticking out of her ear as she talks to either our father or me or her husband as she drives to and from work each day.

Meryl’s right… As my hearing fades and I get tired of folks expecting me to be at their beck and call… I know I will miss hearing things… but, as you put it, it may well allow me the opportunity to remember and maybe teach my children to cherish the moments not interrupted by a phone call, thus reiterating my family’s importance to me. My kids don’t know how to let the answering machine get it. They don’t get the concept that — after all… if I didn’t want others to leave messages… I would not have purchased an answering machine.

I’m all for leaving a message, not answering the phone, letting it go to voicemail… even if I am somewhere I ‘can’ answer it.

By: Tei - Rogue Ink

Tei - Rogue Ink — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:28:25 +0000

Oh, YES. My mother does this, and it drives me MAD. Although I will say that if you’re in a place like a library or a bookstore and you answer your cell phone and immediately say something like,

“Hey, I’m in a library, give me just a minute to go outside so I don’t bother anyone.”

And then put the phone away from your ear and walk briskly outside, everyone in that library will look at you as though you are a tiny god. In a land of discourtesy, the little bits of courtesy are appreciated IMMENSELY.

By: 05/20/2008 Writing Jobs and Links | PoeWar.com Writer's Resource Center

05/20/2008 Writing Jobs and Links | PoeWar.com Writer's Resource Center — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:27:14 +0000

[...] If You Can’t Talk, Don’t Answer Your Phone! A Writer Rants [...]

By: Anne Wayman

Anne Wayman — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:22:48 +0000

pardon me all for giggling a bit… first of all, I’m of a certain age too and I know darn well I pay for the phone, the world does not pay me to be reachable… so it’s not just a age thing.

John, maybe if your dad joined the Y or something? You’ve probably thought of that, but I’m amazed at how many activities my Y has for folks my age and older… I don’t make much use of them, but I see them there when I go work out.

Meryl, I once spent a couple of weeks at what was then called the Riverside School for the Deaf – there’s probably a more pc name now if it’s even still there… but I was fascinated at door bells that blinked lights without sound… it was the very first time I’d ever considered what it would be like to be without hearing.

By: Nancy Nally

Nancy Nally — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:15:48 +0000

Meryl, sorry to hear about your FIL and glad that he’s OK now.

On the flip side, calling the cell phone if she can’t get me at home is what my mother does EVERY time because she can’t imagine me just not answering the phone so she figures I am not at home. In fact, recently, when I didn’t answer either one of them because I didn’t hear them ringing even though I was at home, she DROVE over to my house (she lives in the same neighborhood) because she was convinced I was lying dead on the floor!

By: Nancy Nally

Nancy Nally — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:12:28 +0000

There is an older generation who don’t take phone technology as for granted as us younger folk do and they grew up with this mindset that every phone call must be important. It’s a hard thing for some of them to shake that EVERY phone call must be answered. My mom – in her early 60’s – simply cannot wrap her brain around the fact that at times I would just choose not to answer my phone! She is so desperately afraid of missing calls that she pays for call waiting and then gets annoyed when it interrupts her on the phone! She pays for a special service that annoys her because she doesn’t want to miss a call…whereas younger people will actually just ignore a ringing phone, turn a ringer off, or turn our cell phone off. It’s a whole different mindset towards phone communications.

By: John Hewitt

John Hewitt — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:08:50 +0000

I turn the phone off mid-ring all the time. It works on everyone but my Dad, who will call every phone he thinks I even might be at, just to get in touch with me — no matter how mundane the request. He’ll leave a message on every one too. Never underestimate how much spare time a senior citizen has to throw around.