Listening to Voice Mail
Oct. 16, 2016
My voice mail messages are epic. My friend Sabine appreciates them. Other friends are less enthusiastic. I go on and on. I go on tangents. I might be funny, or dramatic. I might remember something I had wanted to tell the person two weeks before. And then, in the checklist of my mind it's done. But there's a problem—people don't listen to Voice Mail (hereinafter, vm--cuz really, who has time to type V-O-I-C-E M-A-I-L?).
The other day I read a long, lazy letter that my dear friend Priscilla had written to me after she graduated from law school (Boalt Hall) and I was still in my third year (Duke). She was studying French in Lausanne, Switzerland. She wrote about her love of learning, of cultural differences, of missing me, and of course of men (or boys, it's hard to know what to call those creatures who diverted us so much in our twenties)—those whom she loved and those who loved her. I love that letter. We made time when we were younger to write letters like that. I used to write using multicolored felt-tipped markers. Once we were talking about those letters that we used to write back and forth and Priscilla's son asked, "Did you seriously write the letters or were you doing it to be like Pride and Prejudice?" We assured him that we were, as Lizzy Bennet might say, "in earnest."
Much has been written of the demise of the written letter and I, along with others, lament its disappearance. But now I fear even conversation is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. Before answering machines and texting we often ended up wasting time waiting for a phone call. One sunny Saturday in June, 1977 I waited for a couple of hours for Tom Zurich, my then crush, to either call or come by. And yet I remember those hours, and the moment when he finally did come by, fondly.
I got my first answering machine when I was in law school in the '80s. For a long time we listened to messages that people left us. But now it seems we don't have time. I have several friends who tell me outright they don’t listen to vms. This makes me sad because I feel like the most important thing in life is human connection.
I love the Andy Griffith Show. Some of my favorite scenes are when Barney and Andy are sitting on the porch and Barney will say, “Ya know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna go down to the filling station, get me a bottle of pop. Go home, take a nap, go over to Thelma Lou’s and watch a little TEEvee.” And then they will sit there for a few seconds in companionable silence. And then Barney will say, “Yees sir. That what I’m gonna do, get me a bottle of pop, go home, take a nap. Go over to Thelma Lou’s a watch a little TEEvee.” And he still does not make a move.
The same people who don’t have time to listen to a vm from a friend respond every few minutes to texts from friends and family members. They are connected. But I wonder what has been lost in our exchanging those long lazy letters of Priscilla or those porch conversations between Barney and Andy for the frenetic, staccato connection we have through texting?
So many times when I am with someone I feel I am not really with them because they are answering a text every few minutes. It’s “just a sec,” and always for a good reason, but rarely a matter of life or death. I do improv, which is all about support and working as a group. Even in improv there are people who look at their phones while others are doing a scene. I don’t get what cannot wait for the two hours that we are together.
I’m not naïve. I know we’re not going to bring back letter writing or Ma Bell, but I hope it’s not too much to ask that we really listen to each other when we are together.
