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Un-Connected

I am suspect of people who don’t use a computer. The Mensan in me can’t abide. So I married one. The serendipitous insights are worth sharing…

My wife is not into electronic gadgets. At all. She does have a cell phone. I had to buy her that and insist. Safety and all that jazz. You’ll notice I did not say uses a cell phone. She relies on old fashion land lines, her vocal chords, a pencil and eraser, carries her tens to the next column, and gets by quite nicely. No texting, no e-mail, and so on.

I’m guessing thirty-somethings can’t even fathom this. So, have you ever wondered if you could be in a relationship with no means of instant or other ‘electronic’ communication and remain ‘connected’? “Google it, honey” gets me “Google yourself, pervert.”

I tried to explain this existence to my son Roy - from an analog-century relationship - over lunch the other day. He and his girlfriend live nanoseconds apart and Ask Jeeves just about everything. “Think about it Roy” I said, “I can go for a day or two without hearing much, if anything, from my wife and its normal. Like the old days.” These days, a two-minute delay in response time leads to anxiety as the mind wanders; did I say something wrong?, is she with someone else?, where is she? Yo, where you at?! Then you get a reply an anxious hour later… “… in labor shithead, you’re a dad’” I could not tell from the look on his face whether he thought I was on to something or on something.

Don’t stop reading if you are over fifty and think you’re out of this. I’m fifty. And I’ve heard plenty of fifty- and sixty-something parents say to their grandkids “hey, use that thing you got there and find out when your parents are coming to pick you up.” You might end up sharing this article with your kids (and their kids) who don’t actually have to sit for a meal to catch up on their day thanks to GPS technology and iPhones. If they do sit, they communicate via text to friends and colleagues, taking bites between bytes of take-out ordered via cell phone on the way home from work.

I’m not disconnected from my wife actually, just un-tethered via gadgets, cell-towers and satellites. No instant messaging, e-mail, faxes, pages (have you ever been ‘paged’?) or even simple cell phone calls. Her cell phone is never on. We are unconnected in that way. But to see us out for drinks, or at the beach, or even a charity event in a tux and gown, we are your average American couple who thinks that it is better to look good than to feel good. I’m going to make the case that it is not only possible to be unconnected in this way and navigate a relationship, but it may even be good medicine. It will almost certainly become a treatment modality for marriage counseling in the near future; no texting or e-mail for two weeks as the therapist tries to get you to actually have a conversation and come to understandings based on spoken words, eye contact and body language. Maybe even while touching each other. Whoa!

I’m betting most of you have been blasted by a text message or e-mail after some kind of dispute with your significant other. The upper-case, bolded, spittle-ridden and inescapable verbiage leaves little room for interpretation. Maybe just a simple “f/u” text message. But I can honestly say, in this situation, I have not been bytten as such.

And how many times have you confidently pushed the send button with your compulsive instantaneous reply, only to have your subconscious whisper in your ear (during your annual performance review at work) that your partner was home putting all your earthly possessions to the curb?

We are so unconnected, technologically speaking, that I sometimes actually get to miss her over the span of a day or two. This might be the great irony of the situation. To wit, a colleague with whom I travel on business (the day I started this essay) was in his room having virtual phone-video-sex with his very twenty-first century girlfriend. I know because he told me. He is much younger than I and apparently this is as common as canoodling on the couch on a snowy Sunday for us older folks. I, however, was sitting on my hotel bed working on this essay, alone, as I tried unsuccessfully to call my wife on the home phone. Zero chance the cell phone is on. It turns out she was napping through another episode of CSI Miami (yes, the most gadget-ridden show on TV). She loves that show (she might be the only one who thinks, correctly, that it is a science-fiction crime show). Right next to her on the coffee table – and this is true – is a rotary phone. A real, ten-pound, authentic twentieth-century rotary phone. It came with the house, connected (minus the ringer wire for some reason), and it worked. Have you ever dialed a real rotary phone? It’s a trip. I have had kids ask how it works. You just want to pick up that old-fashioned handset and yell “operator, give me Schenectady Eight Nine Eight please….!”

The ringer in the kitchen apparently wasn’t loud enough to rouse her that evening. When she awoke she walked right past the blinking message machine (another nuisance in her world) and went to bed, probably thinking I was too busy to call. And slept like a rock. What I should do is send post-cards two days before I arrive somewhere. There’s probably a dot.com that does that.

Yup, she can’t turn on a computer. It’s not a blonde joke. She can’t (well, I could show her, but you get it). So e-mails are out. You still think I’m kidding, don’t you? Fax? Nope. Text messages? Nope (she probably has hundreds of text messages in her phone that will never be opened). I’m lucky if her cell phone is even turned on. You’re getting the picture now.

Maybe she’s is a techno-savant. She believes that if she thinks it during the day, I will receive the transmission soon after. I show up with flowers or take-out and she says “you got my message!”

The secret to her survival in this tech-laden world may be her lifestyle and profession. First, there are no kids involved (just lots of pets), and second, she is a hair-stylist. A good one. She owns her own salon. She has ‘people’ for tedious administrative activities. Her salon is nicely decorated and warm, the colors rich and earthy. The abundant and generous mirrors create a feeling of infinite space and the music that plays all day long sets the mood. There is no computer, no fax machine, no printer, no web-site and only one phone line. If she is running a credit card you get a busy signal. If you want an appointment you must call and talk to a human who gets out a pencil and writes your name in a book. You can’t cancel via text message, e-mail or web-site. You have to talk to someone. She has few cancellations.

And talk she does. All day long. Good old-fashioned yakking. Her clients are her friends. I can call the salon and ask for her, but chances are her hands are full. “She’ll call you back.”, the desk gal says, as she interprets hand signals from my wife. Someday.

So what’s the up-side to this? You’ve already gleaned that I consider not having her mere nanoseconds away and sending e-mails and text messages ad nauseum to be tremendous freedom. I do. I’m also not one of those tremendously composed multi-taskers who can catch someone’s head as it is falls off their shoulders, while texting, and politely hand it back with an admonition like ‘careful, these are hard to come by.’

I see kids these days caught up in teen-life drama texting furiously, for hours, anywhere and anytime. What are they texting that they can’t say using their voice on a phone? Or is it economics? Maybe an unlimited texting package is much cheaper than the 5000 minutes it would take a teen to say “dude”. The effect of this electronic courtship between youngsters will make for a few dissertations in sociology departments I’m sure.

The serendipity I mention at the top is as follows; all this waiting for face-time is teaching me a tremendous lesson about the ability of time to work in everyone’s favor in a world where you can’t take back what you ‘instantly’ put out there. It turns out nothing need be said sometimes. At work these days I am much less anxious during pauses in communication between clients. What ever happened to ‘sleep on it’ – some of the best advice ever given. I don’t give a 24/7 cell phone number either. I am discovering that things do have a way of working themselves out without the electronic chatter. There will be a dissertation here too; “The Inverse Correlation between Pestering Frequency and Favorable Outcomes.”

The tried and true benefit of ‘time heals all wounds’ fades as you base your value or worth on being available 24/7/365. In relations and negotiations outside of work I have learned that time apart can lead to great episodes of reasoning, wisdom, compromise and even healing that did not require moment-by-moment instant updates. Virtually nothing requires an instant response. We have just come to expect them. And, unfortunately, I have witnessed cell-phone addiction within relationships. Every second, literally, between the ringing and answering, elevates the level of anxiety and distraction to near hysterical levels should the phone be taken away.

The Lost Art of Conversation.

I will now offer a closing argument that is ‘pro’ spoken word and ‘con’ electronic snippets in this era of instant messages and custom ring tones. A woman rose from my wife’s salon chair, some time ago, and pulled her wallet from her purse as she approached the front desk. The desk gal looked her over but said nothing. “How much, honey?” asked the client. “For what?” the hostess replied, justifiably confused. It turns out that this longtime customer sat for 45 minutes and talked for 45 minutes, as they always did, but that was all that happened. It must have been important stuff though; neither of them thought about the hairdo for the entire 45 minutes. She paid anyway, and left a generous tip.

I still have my iPhone, laptop computer and an array of networks behind me that let me chatter away with the rest of the universe and calculate my longitude and latitude instantly. But I was going to have to learn to be patient and deal with life like they did in the old days – when it happened. No matter how urgent the need to get to my side of the story, I’d have to wait. And by the time things came together in such fashion that I could get my items on the agenda, the need had passed. Indeed, time is on our side. We are rapidly losing the value of that astro-physiological component of the universe. Time is an intrinsic factor in every single interaction in the universe, from particle-physics to intergalactic travel. And it appears that the more time we have to deal with something, the better and more consistent the outcome. I offer here that more time is better than less, between utterances, when it comes to humans getting along. I can’t text message my way out of my last blunder. My wife doesn’t roll that way.

The florist knows that better than any communications professor. To wit, I was ‘short’ with my wife on the way out the door this morning. I’m not a morning person. This is one of those times I wish I could send a text. IMS TTYL K? Looks like I’ll be stopping by the florist again. Hmm. There are a lot of flowers in this house.

Essays: The Horse Hollerer | Can I Die Now? | Sharing Onions | Our Thelma and Louise

Metaphysics Over Easy (Hold the Toast) | Another Day at the Office of Life | Can't We All Just Get Along?