LAND-LINE LOVE Episode 1

                                                    FLASH FROM THE ASH

                                                          

                                                    LANDLINE LOVE Episode 1

As the embers lay, fading to ashes/

Some particles refuse to die, showing signs of life by sparks and flashes

Certain things have the tendency/

To try living indefinitely

Such are some memories/ - Ato Long,198-something


                                                          

“I feel sorry for the new generation. They will never know the ‘joys’ of calling a girlfriend and having her parents pick up the land-line receiver.”

The above joke – unfunny as it is – is one of the most recycled, re-touched, re-used and re-tweeted on Social Media. Why? Perhaps, it is so because the older generation can relate. Even though young people obviously know what a land phone line is, the connection with a potential future in-law may not be instantaneously established after reading that so-called joke.

Ok, let an old cat explain. You see, back when I could do back flips without worrying about cracking my spine and ribs there was no text messaging, ooVoo, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, Skype or even bloody hi5 on our mobile phones.  Yes, we had mobile phones all right, although I would be first to admit they were not common. We still transacted business and made relationships work. Most young’uns find it incredible that people were prompt for appointments, located long-separated families and re-connected with old mates in an era like that. Maybe, it really was miraculous. Maybe not.

Funny enough, the mobile phones we had then were tablets! Not nifty-ass tablets with iris-recognition, touch-sensitivity and complex-ass security screen unlocking nonsense. What we had were proper tablets like the type Moses had The Ten Commandments on. Big, bulky and functional. The aerials on those phones were like mini ship masts, honestly. The sheer enormity of these mobile phones made them uncomfortable to use while mobile, so only really mobile people like Policemen and security personnel used them.

So you understand why people just used the landphone lines. The downside was that there was no guarantee as to whose voice you’d hear on the other side. Sometimes, you had to listen to the father of a girl you were chasing growling and shouting down the receiver at you like some old Rottweiler because he was sitting closest to the receiver.

I remember a very embarrassing experience a teenage boy called Jack from Tema had a decade and some years ago. This little nigglet met a brown-skinned, bow-legged, short-haired, thick-lipped girl from Kokomlemle and got swept off his feet like Hurricane Katrina had come through. Did I say Hurricane Katrina? What’s the name of the girl? Well, you guessed right: Katherine!

Jack wrote the girl’s number on his skin when they met. No, actually she wrote it herself on his fore-arm with a marker she was carrying. So you see, from early on in life the boy had flair for the dramatic. Now, little playboy had poor little cute girl’s number. With zero cash, zero bank balance and zero transport, Jack had to do phone calls.

Up until then, Jack barely used the phone in his room. Now he had to.

In the first month of communication between them, Katherine rang and Jack called her back too. He did it sporadically so when Ghana Telecom (now Vodafone) sent the bloody bill, it wasn’t too hefty. But his mum knew right away. Mums always know. She assembled the household and asked if anyone had been making a killing regarding unnecessary phone calls. She said she had noticed a slight increase in the bill from the preceding month compared to the average monthly phone bill.  The boy told a bold-faced lie. He flatly denied touching the phone. For un-rich single mums like the boy had, there were only three options:

A.   Call the phone company and disconnect the line after you’ve settled your bill and any arrears.

B.   Call the phone company and instruct them to make that line a “receive-only” line (where nobody can make a call) or...

C.   Put the telephone in a little box with lock and key. I’m serious. You could pick the receiver and speak if a call came through but you could not make a call without the key to the telephone-coffin. They were designed in such a way that you had no – or were not supposed to have - access to the buttons or the round dial without a key. Back then, carpenters were moving telephone-coffins truckloads. They were flying off shelves like malaria pills. I swear some few carpenters may have bought yachts selling those wooden things to exasperated mothers around Ghana.

So which method did Jack’s mother choose? She opted for bits of options A and B. That is; she disconnected both phones in the kids’ rooms and locked up the phone in the lounge. When she brought the device home, Jack looked on in horror as his mother locked the land phone with a satisfied look on her face.

Jack still did not have enough money to visit Katherine, his new found love regularly in Kokomlemle so he had to make the phone calls to keep the “relationship” alive. HAD TO! In fact, he hadn’t even seen her since their write-your-number-on-my-forearm-with-your-marker first meeting. I wish I could see her a second time.  The young boy thought of a way of outsmarting his mum. Boys will always be boys.

Eureka! Like the Greek Philosopher in his bath, the idea hit him. It had taken a week but he had the plan now. He knew by heart where numbers of the dial were. So he reckoned if he could get a screw driver or spanner or comb in there, he could still make calls! He tried all three items but not a single one worked as well as –wait for it – a fork! It was the last resort, and it worked a treat.

All he had to do was insert the fork in the little space (oops) between the bottom of the telephone-coffin and the top of the telephone itself and then carefully tap out the number buttons required. Katherine’s numbers were easy enough to punch out with his beloved fork.  He will call Katherine when his mum was slaving hard at work and yap his life away every weekday.

He had tailor-made lies ready for his mum because he knew end of month telephone enquiries will begin soon. He had it all figured out, he thought. Sure enough, the bill came. Sure enough, Jack’s mum was not impressed with the bill incurred. She assembled the members of the household punctually and asked the unknown culprit to confess and be spared embarrassment.

Confessing was the last thing on the boy’s mind because he observed his mum’s face and knew there was no way she could prove his guilt so he poured the lies out smoothly like lava. He realized that her facial expression was that of shock tinged with a dying note of fury. The phone in the lounge was locked and the key was usually in her purse … or in her bra and the telephone-box-coffin thingy had not been broken into, so whodunit and how had it been done? So despite feeling bad for his mum (because she had to pay the bill), the boy was guiltily pleased that he would walk scot-free twice again.

On the 4^th day of the next month, the boy returned home after “studies” AKA extra-classes and was about to read a copy of SOURCE magazine when his mother summoned him for a meeting. He was getting sick and tired of these inconclusive meetings. He yawned. Boring.

When he entered the lounge, he noticed his sisters were already in. “Look sisters, if any of you somehow is mysteriously using the phone, ‘fess up now and save us all the stress, please.” The best defense method is attack and that was what he was trying.

“Brother, are you sure you are not the one? You are the most likely suspect in the mystery department. Just come clean, would you?”

“I have not done anything and I am not going to plead guilty to a crime I haven’t committed just because you want me to.” Jack said so with the straightest face he could manage.

Just then, the door to the adjoining room opened theatrically… just like in the movies. Lo and behold, two people stepped into the lobby and shut the door behind them in real life slow motion movement: KATHERINE AND HER WIDOWER FATHER! They were in the house!

To be continued..........