Telephones- Want or Need?
by Just as necessity is the mother of invention, lack is the mother of resourcefulness.
Nowadays we have people living in communities, cities, and even countries away from their family. There is no one nearby to help in an emergency if the spouse is out of the home. We need phones to be able to contact each other so that hubby can rush home if your little one needs to go to the hospital, or even for more innocuous things like asking your spouse to pick up some flour from the store. Not to mention that government officials and any other official place wants to have a number to contact you. But I digress.
Surviving Without a Phone
With no land line and a cell phone with no outgoing calls, I sometimes was a bit stuck when I needed to contact someone. Like when I was going to be late to work and needed to give a heads up, etc.
How I managed:
Collect calls. I called collect from my cell phone to my husband or mother, they’d refuse the call, and then call me back.
Computer text messaging. Gmail offers free text messages to cell phones. (You receive a finite amount of texts though.)
By foot. If I could walk somewhere to pass on a message, I did.
Mooching off friends. When push came to shove and I needed to call someone immediately , I did ask a neighboring friend if I could use her phone. Not something I did often- just one time in that whole month- but it is an option.
Emailing and Instant Messenger. If the person I needed to reach was near a computer, I’d send them instant messages or email them. Alternatively, I sent an online person a message, asking him to call someone else and ask them to call me. (Like emailing my brother to ask him to call my mom, etc.)
I was only able to do all this because I had a cell phone capable of receiving free incoming calls, understanding friends and family who were considerate of my predicament, called me on my cell phone because I couldn’t call them, played messenger boy to contact people I needed to reach, and my husband has outgoing calls on his phone. (We didn’t switch his phone to prepaid yet because he hadn’t completed his contract.) I felt bad relying on so many people for favors during this time, and I do realize that my lack of a phone cost my family more money. I wouldn’t have chosen to go phone-less and am glad that I now have a phone.
It boils down to this- telephones with outgoing calls- want or need?
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