I am not a "phone-person".
When I was a kid I loved getting and making phone calls during the times when I had a comfortable number of good friends. Then, when my peers turned on me and I had fewer friends, sometimes only one friend, the phone reminded me that I was unpopular. So, I kind of outgrew telephones on some level. Was kind of mad at the phone.
In my twenties, I noticed that some people would wear me out with long-winded, one-sided telephone calls. It would drive me up the wall to not even be able to get a word in edgewise to say it was time for me to go so I could end the call. I would lay on the floor shifting the receiver around because my ear was getting sore and sweaty.
In my thirties, my sister began using her phone calls to us as a replacement for hiring a psychiatrist. Long, long calls made usually when she was drunk. She would talk in circles about the most difficult problems and get mad if you gave advice or became frustrated with her. It would last one or two hours and she would go on a binge calling me first, then my father, then my mother. They felt sorry for her and would let her vent endlessly as a way of helping her. It would be the same thing over and over again. In the background she would be screaming and swearing at her son or significant other and saying terrible things about them within their earshot. It began to take over some of my evenings. It got really bad about five years ago when I took on a job where I often had to wake up very early the next day and had had a very long day already where I only had maybe one or two quality hours before I had to go to bed again. I became very angry and resentful that she demanded I waste my evenings like this. She seemed to not believe me that I had a real schedule crunch and was truly exhausted from my job. I owed it to her to listen to these drunken rants because my life was easier than hers.
Finally, I began screening my calls. Then my mother began to get annoyed with me because she knew I screened out my sister and figured I was probably screening her too and became offended.
That is what basically ruined the phone for me.
I rarely answer the phone anymore and let the machine pick up. People rarely call me any more because of this. They seem to be taking it personally. It is a no-win situation.
At work, because of my lack of seniority and being a door mat, I was, for awhile, the person who was always left to answer the phone, no matter what I was working on or where in the building I was. The supervisor noticed that everyone was taking advantage of me in this way and put a stop to it with a new rule that by the third ring, somebody better be heading to that phone and it better not be PP. There are still people there who don't think they should have to drop what they are doing to answer the phone, including the new girl, but it is better for me than it was.
Cell phones--I have one because my father insisted on paying for one in case he needed us in an emergency. Then he was afraid to bother me by calling me on it. He was dying then, so I guess that explains the inconsistancy. I rarely use my cell phone, but the ring still reminds of the time the nursing home called me in the middle of the night to help them sooth him from a panic attack.
Most people I work with call each other all the time on their cell phones to chitchat. So, the phone is back to making me feel unpopular again. My N friend is never without a phone and makes and receives calls as often as he breaths. He is at his most normal on the phone as far as being able to talk to me like a human being. But I have only called him twice. Once it went okay. The second time he blew me off. I have only seen him do that a couple other times. I think one time one of his kids called him or his wife did. 99% of the time he relishes his calls. I was hurt the time he blew me off. Especially since I was calling him to continue a conversation he started that got interrupted. Guess he lost interest in the meantime.
It seems easier to just not be a phone-person.
This topic sure does raise my hackles.
I prefer email, but there are drawbacks. It is not as personal and not immediate. I think that can be an obstacle to bonding, especially since most people seem to prefer the phone. Another thing that sets me apart from people. But this is how it has evolved and I don't currently feel very motivated to change things so that the phone becomes part of my life again.
PP
