Women and telephones - essay

While we wait endlessly for something to happen (which somehow seems to get more and more doubtful each day) here is another unwanted, unfinished, uncollected, and uninhibited essay from the collection of morialekafa.


What is this bizarre relationship women have with the telephone? If ever there was a sex-linked behavioral trait it surely has to do with this woman to machine love affair. When a man uses a telephone he invariably has some business to conduct, even if only to arrange a tee time, a fishing trip, a poker party, a baseball game or whatever. He’s on the phone maybe a few seconds, a minute, or in an unusually extreme case, maybe two full minutes. But a woman? You can bet she’ll be on the phone for anywhere from ten minutes to two or more hours no matter what the call is about or how trivial the message.
A woman, for example, will mail a package to someone – her mother or a friend. She then has to telephone that she mailed the package. Then two days later she has to call to see if the package arrived. Of course on both occasions she has to explain every detail of her recent life no matter how tiny or inconsequential. Does it really matter whether or not she went shopping the same day she mailed the package, that she bought a bra, pair of shoes, what kind of bra, what kind of shoes? Given the fact that it is not necessary to report that the package was actually mailed that day is it important to discuss hemlines? Colors? Haircuts? What wedding present to give to someone she barely even knows? I have actually heard women describing on the long distance telephone what color they painted their nails that day, what someone said to them in the supermarket about the price of potatoes, how they tied a colored ribbon in their hair that looked so cute, how their new sandals didn’t fit and had to be returned and on and on. Why do these absolutely trivial everyday ordinary events need a half hour long distance telephone conversation? If they are worthy of being reported at all why not a letter? Nowadays even e-mail? Perhaps a fax? Is it any wonder letter writing is a lost art? Indeed, if they tried to include all this utter trivia in a letter they would not only have writer’s cramp but a monumental postal bill.
Even so, I would venture to predict that no technological innovation will change the behavior of women on the telephone – not e-mail, fax, or cell phones (indeed, this latter will probably make things better for these talkathon types). There was a commercial a while back for some phone company or other with low rates so, the actress boasts, “now we can talk for two hours about nothing at all,” public testimony to the reality I am describing. An even more recent commercial shows a woman talking for six hours to her sister in Spain. She says not to worry as they both have Yak (and I guess they certainly do). Women are every bit as pathological about the telephone as they are about shopping and ice cream, perhaps even moreso. Furthermore, their behavior in this regard is not open to criticism. Even mention the absurdity of what they do with the telephone brings forth a defensive rebuttal with all the force of a nuclear bomb. “I haven’t talked to mother for a whole week!” (two days). “Can’t I talk to my friends?” (yes, but not for hours on long distance). Then, after you suffer through these eternal calls and inquire as to what they said, the answer is often “nothing.”
“You talked to your mother for three hours and she said ‘nothing’?”
Well, she told me she bought some new sheets. Pink. And she had her hair done. And her nails. And on Friday night she went out with the girls. And, oh yes, she had a flat tire and a nice man stopped and changed it for her. She changed the newspaper in the canary cage, and “you’ll never believe this, that Marilyn woman (whom she knows only third or fourth hand) is leaving her husband for a tilesetter. Can you believe it?” This sort of conversation can go on and on and on, not sound and fury, but whimpering and simpering, not even worth a single moment of a single hour of a single day but yet, somehow of monumental significance to women who complain endlessly of not having enough time. Of course they don’t have enough time. They can’t hang up the phone long enough.
Yeah, I know this will be considered sexist. But keep track of it yourself. If women don’t spend far more time on the telephone than men I’ll agree to being a monkey’s uncle. At least I won’t have to explain why there are no bananas that day. Or describe in minute detail who I saw at the supermarket, or report second-hand on the activities of the girl who works in Safeway whom I barely know, or, mercifully report on the condition of my nylons, panties, bra’s, nails, hair, the cute dresses I saw at K Mart but didn’t buy, the summer sandals I just bought that almost but didn’t fit so I had to take them back, the slip I had to return because it wasn’t just right, and blah, blah, blah, blah. All in all I guess it is a good thing women spend so much time on the phone. It keeps them from shopping.