Direct line to God
My brother and I have very compatible senses of humor. We grew up listening to all the same comedy albums (Yes, albums, we are that old.) and watching the same movies, so we often speak to each other in quotes from these sources.
We also find humor in the abstract and bizarre. So it was that when I got my first apartment, I found one of those slim line type phones, which had an actual bell ringer. It was a very weird mintish green color, but it had a bell ringer!
After about a month of use I realized that I could take the phone apart! And, rather than have a number mat which lies over buttons, these buttons were all separate. (If you see where this is going, we should go out drinking some time.) Of course I re-arranged the numbers! You still had to press the “1” position for a “1” but the button might be the “4” button. As long as you didn’t look at the phone too much, you could dial without problem. But the looks on my friend’s faces when they asked to use the phone for the first time were amazing! Okay, so I am easily amused, I can admit that.
When my brother moved from his dorm to his first apartment, I bequeathed the phone to him. He left it in the same state that I had set it up, but made sure that people were drunk before they tried to make a call. After some years of abuse the phone stopped working, but he still kept it on the counter, cord trailing but unplugged. He began to call it the “Direct Line to God” with the comment that if it ever rings, we are well and truly screwed.
Goonie goohoo, my brother, goonie goohoo.
********************************
Random Fact; According to this site $1.00 of goods or services in the year 1969 (When I was born) would cost $5.30 today
We also find humor in the abstract and bizarre. So it was that when I got my first apartment, I found one of those slim line type phones, which had an actual bell ringer. It was a very weird mintish green color, but it had a bell ringer!
After about a month of use I realized that I could take the phone apart! And, rather than have a number mat which lies over buttons, these buttons were all separate. (If you see where this is going, we should go out drinking some time.) Of course I re-arranged the numbers! You still had to press the “1” position for a “1” but the button might be the “4” button. As long as you didn’t look at the phone too much, you could dial without problem. But the looks on my friend’s faces when they asked to use the phone for the first time were amazing! Okay, so I am easily amused, I can admit that.
When my brother moved from his dorm to his first apartment, I bequeathed the phone to him. He left it in the same state that I had set it up, but made sure that people were drunk before they tried to make a call. After some years of abuse the phone stopped working, but he still kept it on the counter, cord trailing but unplugged. He began to call it the “Direct Line to God” with the comment that if it ever rings, we are well and truly screwed.
Goonie goohoo, my brother, goonie goohoo.
********************************
Random Fact; According to this site $1.00 of goods or services in the year 1969 (When I was born) would cost $5.30 today
posted by Eric the Something at 11/16/2005 03:34:00 AM
3 Comments:
my parents still have one of those phones in the basement. I begged my Dad to give it to me when I moved into my condo, which I decorated in a retro-modern style complete with checkered kitchen tile and mint-green kitchen walls. But he assured me the phone no longer works. *sigh* They're really hard to come by these days.
One of my favorite cell phones had a very realistic bell ringer sound. Unfortunatley the service sucked, so I only had the phone for a month. I miss it still.
My brother wrote:
Emailed Adam (His roommate at the time of this tale.) the url for your blog last night so he could reminisce as
well. He replied, "I think the only people who understood that phone
were the three of us."
Eduardo
"Nothing is worth more than this day." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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