Your Call Cannot Be Completed
I have an irrational sadness for bygone payphones. Just this morning I read an article in the New York Times (the actual newspaper, left second hand on my doorstep, by my neighbor) about the remaining payphones in New York City being extracted. All but four on the Upper West Side — as if the Upper West Side would have the most critical use for payphones.
I fall into that category of nostalgia verses necessity. Although there’s still part of me justifying their practical use. Even in New York City not everyone has a cell phone. And even if you do, don’t you ever just want to call an operator to hear someone else’s helpful voice on the other end of the line? I’m not talking crisis line but someone to sift through all the listings for Danny Reynolds with you until you find the right one.
My almost nine year old has been begging for their own cell phone for at least two years. I thought I’d have until they were double digits. It’s not the same as asking for nickels and dimes, not even the same as asking for a phone line in their room, not by a long shot.
When you spend the change you’ve found on the sidewalk, on the supermarket floor, and on the step outside the yogurt shop on calls from the payphone at the library or in the upper hallway by the stairwell in your middle school, you have something to say. You rehearse it as the call is being connected and then again after the recording comes on, Please deposit 25¢ for the next three minutes. Thank you. And when you chicken out, press the lever, your change slides through the return and you’re rich again.
Now there’s something called The Payphone Project. It touches what I want but also deepens my sadness by scrolling through payphone sightings on my cell phone instead of spotting them in the real world. Instead of dropping my kid and their friend at the bookstore with a couple of quarters and saying, I’ll be back at four, call me if you want me to pick you up sooner.
