A phone only a mother could love

I am my own paradox. Yesterday's post revealed my fascination with the explosive technological advances of the Internet. The more it evolves the more enamored I become.

This post belies another side of my personality. A dark curmudgeonly side that’s fundamentally anti-gadget. I hate the idea of having drawers full of battery-powered clutter. My kitchen accoutrements include little more than an old-fashioned side-by-side toaster and a sleek but otherwise unremarkable coffee maker. No milk frothers, no juicers, no salad shooters.

But it's not just my kitchen that's behind the times. We’ve had the same phone for many years now. It’s survived three international moves (barely) and has begun to exhibit age-related tremors and Alzheimer-like symptoms. And as much as I hate to struggle to understand conversations over a crackly line, I hate shopping at big electronics stores even more.

So let me just get this out in the open: For those of you who’ve had to prematurely end phone conversations with me because you couldn't hear what I was saying, don't blame lagging German telecom technology-- chalk it up to my own special form of electronic shopophobia.

Yesterday I had some time to kill and popped into a local junk antique store. I rarely buy anything there, but I love to browse through the detritus of the ages: turn-of-the-century class photos with their rows of solemn faces, a well-worn pocket bible that probably accompanied a loved-one to war, a stack of crisp love letters from 1935 meticulously bound by an elegant peach ribbon...

And then suddenly there it was, staring at me pleadingly from a dusty table. A telephone of absolute mythic ugliness. The metaphoric equivalent of a hairless chihuahua, but just not as nervous. How could one NOT be swayed to adopt it and give it a loving home?

The casing is actually made of marble and if I can believe the sticker on the bottom it is gold plated. And even with MY imagination I can't for the life of me picture who would have invited it into their homes back in the day. (Maybe someone like me who likes to have a little comic relief waiting in ambush at the top of the stairway...)

Cutting edge it's not, but it works great, and it's certainly a conversation piece. The boys are fascinated-- I'm thinking of pitting them against each other in a battle to see who will eventually get to inherit it...