Telephone Police
Yay ... I made it to the 1/4th point! Now I won't feel quite as pathetic if I fall over. :)
When my best friend and I were in high school, we talked on the phone a lot. We’d put in a hard day at school and then come home and call each other to chatter about all the things that we somehow found to chatter about between the end of the day and when we got home. This isn’t news; anyone who was a teenage girl or knows teenage girls knows that they like to talk.
At this time, my father was self-employed (as he was for my entire life) and depended on getting phone calls in order to know what was going on with job sites and with the stove shop. Obviously, having a teenage daughter chattering away caused some problems. Dad begged and pleaded, threatened and coerced. He did everything he could think of and we found ways around the rules. Of course, because talking was all-sacred and we couldn’t risk it. We might miss some vital fact!
One evening, Connie and I were chattering, as always, and this deep male voice cut into the conversation, “This is the telephone police.” Con and I fell silent, and the voice continued, “This phone has been flagged for excessive usage. If this use does not immediately end, we will be paying a visit and arresting the guilty parties.”
Silence.
Then Connie and I quickly tried to decide if it was my father or if there really were telephone police. We weren’t sure - for all we knew, maybe they were real! We didn’t want to go to jail.
The phone police remained a joke in our family, especially with dad and me. Even now, when Con and I would talk on our cellphones for ages, Dad would shake his head and tsk and threaten a visit by the phone police. But when we were teenagers, he managed the impossible. He managed to get teenage girls off the telephone.
When my best friend and I were in high school, we talked on the phone a lot. We’d put in a hard day at school and then come home and call each other to chatter about all the things that we somehow found to chatter about between the end of the day and when we got home. This isn’t news; anyone who was a teenage girl or knows teenage girls knows that they like to talk.
At this time, my father was self-employed (as he was for my entire life) and depended on getting phone calls in order to know what was going on with job sites and with the stove shop. Obviously, having a teenage daughter chattering away caused some problems. Dad begged and pleaded, threatened and coerced. He did everything he could think of and we found ways around the rules. Of course, because talking was all-sacred and we couldn’t risk it. We might miss some vital fact!
One evening, Connie and I were chattering, as always, and this deep male voice cut into the conversation, “This is the telephone police.” Con and I fell silent, and the voice continued, “This phone has been flagged for excessive usage. If this use does not immediately end, we will be paying a visit and arresting the guilty parties.”
Silence.
Then Connie and I quickly tried to decide if it was my father or if there really were telephone police. We weren’t sure - for all we knew, maybe they were real! We didn’t want to go to jail.
The phone police remained a joke in our family, especially with dad and me. Even now, when Con and I would talk on our cellphones for ages, Dad would shake his head and tsk and threaten a visit by the phone police. But when we were teenagers, he managed the impossible. He managed to get teenage girls off the telephone.