At The Dawn of Technology

I was on the Metrorail heading to work the other morning, earbuds on and listening to tunes on my iPhone. I chanced to look around at my fellow passengers and realized that I was surrounded by iPhones (This is how you tell – look at the wires coming down from the earbuds. One of the wires will have a very small, slender, rectangular bit on it near the mouth of the wearer). People talking on them, listening to music, and most astoundingly – checking their e-mail and the internet – not connected to a computer or a network or WiFi – while traveling on public transportation! What an age we live in!

I couldn’t help but think back about 25 years ago, when the Gadget Of The Day was – are you ready? – the Answering Machine. Oh, how I resisted getting an answering machine. I thought them impersonal and rude. And then I had to get a new phone number, and the wrong numbers started pouring in. I got tired of answering my ringing phone, interrupting my life, only to find someone who didn’t speak English on the other end, asking for Jose. I bought an answering machine.

I recorded an outgoing message in a bad English accent, that went something like: “You’ve reached xxx-xxxx. This is the invisible maid speaking. I’m sorry we can’t take your call at the moment, but if you’ll leave your name, number, and a brief message, someone will get back to you as soon as possible. Oh, and there is no one here by the name of Juan, Pablo, or Jose.”

One Friday night I came home from work to hear a woman’s voice and this message: “Ron, it’s me. Call me.” Saturday morning, I came home from shopping to: “Ron, it’s been hours. I neeeeed you. Oh, hahaha, funny outgoing message. Who recorded that for you?” Later that day: “Ron, omigod, what happened to you? I’m desperate!“

OK, so now I’m freaking out because I think someone’s dying and I don’t know who Ron is, or Ron’s friend (no caller i.d. in those days). You know, like Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”? A couple of days later I came home from work to this message: “Hi, this is Ron. I’m sorry my friend had the wrong number and probably made you crazy over the last couple of days. I just wanted to let you know that everything’s okay.”

That wasn’t the punchline. Here’s the punchline: About a year later, I was office manager at the small law firm I had been working at, and we had placed an ad in the local business newspaper for a legal secretary. Guess who came to interview? It was Ron. No kidding. He had (almost) the same last name as mine, but for one letter. And of course, the same first initial. He was also a legal secretary, just like me.

Ah, Technology.