ON THE DEAD-SERIOUS IMPORTANCE OF TELEPHONE ETIQUETTE

I know what you’re thinking. But, no, the above is not actually a training video for extraterrestrials on How to Pass As Human Prior to The Great Alien Invasion of Planet Earth. Instead this one is to teach MORONS (us Baby Boomers) How to Use the Telephone!

By the way, there are hundreds of similar, vintage black and white PSAs (public service announcements videos) on YouTube waiting to entertain you. They cover so many very important issues: “Dinner Etiquette”; “What Makes a Girl Popular”; “Your Doctor Is Your Friend”; “Your Kiss of Affection, the Germ of Infection”; “They Don’t Wear Labels: I’ve Got VD ”; “Let Asbestos Protect the Buildings on Your Farm”; “Beware of Homosexuals”; “How Much Affection?”; and “The Trouble With Women, to name a few.At the risk of sounding like some crude scrawl of grafitti on the inside wall of a phone booth (remember phone booths?): For a good time… search YouTube for “vintage PSA’s.”

In 1958, “Telephone Etiquette” was the name of an actual dumbass teaching unit we kids had to endure in junior high. That particular ‘adventure’ lasted for approximately two dumbass weeks— and dedicated dumbassedly to conforming our rambunctious juvenile behaviors around the family telephone to rigid, recognizably Stepford-Wives-like standards, a laughable goal for preadolescents. The unit included intensive emphasis on such rocket-science, hard-to-grasp concept as The Three Magic Phrases: “Please,” “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry.” Fortunately, since we apparently were a class of morons, there was this helpful video:

So… how did we, the rambunctious preadolescent little morons, fare in our unit on telephone etiquette? Not so well, considering the number of after school detentions that ensued, along with the delicious fact that, on one particular day, a police officer was summoned to make an appearance. Of course the number of detentions was pretty much maintaining the status quo throughout the school year with the teacher we had: Mrs. Bernice Sterling, a.k.a, “Bugsy.” The cop being called? That was a one-off.

Bugsy’s reputation spanned decades. For instance, when our school held its annual evening Open House, giving parents the opportunity to drop into the classroom after work and chat with our teachers about our progress or lack thereof, my dad who was a saint by the way, couldn’t muster up the courage to show up. Bugsy’d been one of his teachers way back when, and he was still terrified of her to that day.

Anyway, considering how we boys (not so much the girls) found it next to impossible to take many subjects seriously, this unit didn’t stand the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell. Like most other classes there was reading the assigned pages, taking notes, memorizing the do’s and don’t’s from various charts, and taking quizzes.

But then there was also those stupid ggiggle-worthy “exercises” we had to perform where everybody had to partner up— each couple taking its turn in the pair of empty chairs at the front of the room and each student, in turn, directed to simulate phoning his or her partner to demonstrate proper phone etiquette for a passing grade. Sometimes the play-acting called for you to make a personal call to a friend; sometimes it involved calling a potential employer to ask for a job application and interview, etc. Whatever.

The very process of partnering up had one obviously built-in classroom management problem. It was the teacher who selected who’d couple up with whom, supposedly at random, but invariably, to keep one class-clown from being seated with another class-clown (a sure-fire recipe for classroom havoc), she tended to pair one boy with one girl whenever possible. So just try to imagine the barbed gigglesand whispers and note-passings that this engendered, along with the cruel, Roman Coliseum embarrassment the shyest, non-popular, non-attractive girl or boy had to suffer right along with the future prom king or queen linked with them. The blackboard jungle.

Secondly, and most importantly, we boys honestly knew so much more than old Bugsy would ever know about the real world of telephone use in her lifetime! We were the frickin’ experts! So the very idea of me (or any of my pals) having to demonstrate how to conduct a proper telephone call with a close friend was so beyond laughable it wasn’t even funny.

Up until 3^rd or 4^th grade, my family didn’t even own a telephone. But my grandmother who lived in an apartment upstairs did. One of those big wooden boxes that looked like a large birdhouse mounted on the living room wall, with what looked like a large pair of bugged-out eyes installed across the top-front of the box. Those were actually a pair of rounded, metal bells that rang whenever a call was received. Then there was that little black cone for speaking into, mounted like some cartoonish puckered mouth below the ‘eyes.’ Also, hanging off the box’s left side, was the large chess-pawn-shaped receiver on a cord. And finally, the little metal crank installed on the right side of the box was used for generating electricity. All very steampunk.

Occasionally I would be allowed, under parental supervision, to make a “magic” call to Stevie Taylor, my main pal who lived down the street. But once I’d got the hang of it, I’d sometimes sneak upstairs by my own self when Nanny was out, give the little crank a few turns, take the receiver off the hook, and secretly listen in on what was supposedly private conversations neighbors of ours were having. See, Nanny’s phone was connected to some of our neighbors on what was then known as a party line.  A private phone line was expensive, so most families opted for the cheaper party-line plan. There were at least four or five neighborhood neighbors’ phones sharing the line with Nanny’s. So when a call came in and rang in two ring bursts (ring-ring! pause ring-ring! pause, etc.) then all connected families would hear it and know that that call was for the Smith family; whereas if the call sounded with bursts of five rings (ring-ring-ring-ring-ring! pause) then that might designate the call was for Nanny, etc. And in a perfect world, only someone in the designated family would pick up the receiver. In a perfect world.

Guess what.  The world is flawed. The party-line era was infamous for adults sneakily listening in on their neighbors’ phone conversations. I mean, all the time. It was the neighborhood sport of phone-tapping spies. A world of audio voyeurs.

One day while I was listening in on whomever, I accidentally positioned the hand-held receiver a little too close to the speaking cone. Guess what happened! SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Ear-deafening feedback! Thunderstruck, I dropped the receiver! Immediately the screech stopped, thank God! But I could hear tinny little far-away voices from the dangling receiver, one exclaiming, “What the HELL was THAT!?” and another saying, “I have no idea!” I carefully returned the receiver to its cradle, and crept back down the stairs with a guilty heart. Bur EUREKA! Serendipitously, I had discovered the magic of feedback, although I didn’t know the name at that point. Did I ever create telephone feedback again? On purpose? What do you think? Of course I did.

So, back then there was this old crone, Lottie with the whiskery old witch’s chin, who lived right across the street from us— a real ‘Mrs. Dubose’ straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird. And when I was just a toddler playing outside in the rain, she’d spy me standing in a puddle and what’d she do? She’d come a-running out onto her porch screaming like a banshee at me! “You get your shoes right out of that puddle, mister! Your father works hard all day long at keeping you kids in shoes and clothes, and look what you do! Just look at you! You should be ashamed of yourself! You should be beat with a hickory stick, you ungrateful little…!”

Well, I didn’t know what business of hers my shoes or my dad’s income was because… she wasn’t my mother. But I’d retreat sobbing and tracking water back into the fortress of my home anyway .

When I was a little older, she was being bothered by dogs pooping on her lawn and running wild through her flowerbeds. So she came over to our house one day and asked my dad to let her borrow my Red Ryder BB rifle. And damn it, Dad let her take it. And oh, didn’t it irk me to no end to see her riding shotgun over there day after day, slouched in her porch chair with my rifle laid across her lap like some stagecoach guard in a western cowboy movie,and taking occasional potshots at the bandits. And at least a couple of times I caught her taking aim at me while chasing a stray rubber ball that was rolling a little too close to her flowers. She was your basic hard, neighborhood, old bag, a force to be reckoned with, to be feared by little boys, salesmen, and canines. That hag deserved every damned egg teenagers ever pelted her house with over the years.

So anyway, whenever I’d tiptoe up to Nanny’s vacant apartment to while away some time listening to the neighbors gossiping on the party line, I’d give the phone a couple of cranks, quietly lift  the receiver out of the cradle, sit back, and just play spy. But… whenever I’d hear that familiar, scratchy, Long John Silver’s voice of Lottie’s, I’d delight in drawing the receiver up to the mouthpiece and… then… SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nanny finally got herself a rotary-dial telephone. So did everybody else in the neighborhood, including Lottie. So gone were my days of fun of being The Phantom Feedbacker of the Neighborhood Party Line. Because rotary phones cleverly mounted the receiver and transmitter forever apart at opposite ends of the barbell-shaped handset. (The manufacturers had found me out.)

I’d grown tired of listening to boring old ladies exchanging recipes and supposedly juicy gossip anyway. And meanwhile Lottie was maintaining her hard-earned reputation as the number-one, all-time, serial, neighborhood party-line eavesdropper ever. A legend. She’d become that ghostly shadow, always standing off to the side and just behind the lacy curtain that veiled the window in her front door. Sort of like that signature TV pencil sketch of Alfred Hitchcock at the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Perpetually the eyes and the ears of the neighborhood. Only with a telephone handset glued to her ear.

So of course when you were speaking to someone/anyone on the phone, you knew you were being monitored, and would choose your words accordingly. However, one afternoon after school, I was on the phone with Steve Taylor and, I don’t know why but I was feeling extra-feisty. And suddenly, mid-conversation, I just blurted right out, “Be careful what you say, Stevie, ‘cause you just know that old bag Lottie across the street is listening to every doggone word we’re saying!”

“WELL I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW I’M DOING NO SUCH THING!” Lottie blasted haughtily, and then bang! Gone. She’d hung up. Good ol’ Lottie. It made my day!

So anyway, “Feedback” was my first lesson learned in becoming a sophisticated telephone “operator.”  But I learned another little phone trick just as serendipitously. I was older at this point, and using the rotary dial had become second nature to me. I was at somebody’s house and had to call home to leave a message for Mom. OK, Nanny’s upstairs phone number was 2197. Just four simple numbers. But being in a hurry, I screwed up, actually only dialing only 297.Quickly realizing my mistake, I hung up to do it again but before I could even pick the handset back up, the phone was ringing right in front of me. I automatically picked up and said, “Hello?” There was no answer. “Hello? Anybody there?” Nope.  Just the dial tone. That was odd. But it had happened so instantaneously, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had somehow caused it. On a whim, I dialed 297 intentionally this time, and hung right up. Again, the phone rang. Again, no one there. What a curious thing. But by God, I had stumbled onto something! I tried it again. And yes: I could make my host’s phone ring at will. And already I was wondering, Would this work on another phone? Other… phones? On Nanny’s phone?

So at home I headed upstairs, dialed 297, and hung up. Yes! The phone rang! Nanny came out of the kitchen and lifted the handset to her ear. “Hello?” she said, “…Hello?” and then, “Well, that’s odd. I guess they hung up. Just a dial tone.” I was ecstatic. I really had discovered something! Something deliciously all mine! Something to make life just a little more interesting. And I alone seemed to be the only one in town who knew about it. In no time, I had pranked about a dozen people I knew.

Say I’m at a friend’s house, waiting for my buddy to come downstairs. His mom leaves the room. I get out of my chair, dial 297, hang up, and leap back into the chair again. Ring! Mom hurries back in, picks up the phone, says hello a couple of times, and says, “Well that’s funny. Just a dial tone.” I was controlling people. It gave me a sense of power. I even pulled that stunt on Merrick Square Market a few times. But I kept it just for myself. I didn’t share my… super power with any of my friends. For a long time. Finders, keepers you know. But of course I eventually did spill the beans. And then… phones were ringing all over Dover-Foxcroft, driving the population crazy. heh heh…

Oh, I’ve just gotta tell you this one. This one is rich:

It was December, Christmas time, and J. J. Newberry’s had a little sales gimmick going on that year— a Santa Claus hotline. Their Santa’s phone number was published in their Christmas flyers and advertised on the radio. Little rug rats were encouraged to call the hotline and talk to Santa, telling him what they wanted for Christmas. I, and a friend, saw a fun opportunity in this. We would call the hotline and, using our Academy Award winning babyish voices, mess with Santa’s mind. We were such little dicks. The prototypes of Beavis and Butthead.

But unfortunately for all concerned, there was a very, very similar number to the hotline’s that was getting a lot of calls by accidental misdialing. Word from other Beavis and Butthead prototypes had gotten around. Turned out, it was already widely known to whom that number belonged. It was a woman in town who was socking away a little Christmas money—you know, cash under the table— by entertaining ‘gentlemen callers’ at all hours of the night, if you get my drift. And word was, she was one angry dudette. Well, since we were a couple of the worst kind of little dinks, and due to the fact that there was no such thing as Caller ID, we didn’t have to be told twice.

A woman’s voice answered, “Hello?”

“Can I pweathe talk to Thanta Cwauthe,” I said, with a child’s voice and a lisp, “cauthe I wanna tell him wha…”

“Goddamn you little shits all to hell! You got the wrong number. Again! Now this… has to stop, you dig? I can’t take this anymore. This, for your information, is a business phone! Not the Santa Claus number at Newberry’s, for Christ’s sake! And you’re tying up my goddamn line! Now… you just call the right number right now and you tell… your fat-ass Santa Claus… that J. J. Newberry’s is gonna get sued! For harassment! And if you’re stupid enough to call this number one more time, I’ll… track you down! I’ll find you and wring your little neck! You got that!?”

“Well… Mewwy Chwithmuth…” I said, but Bang! She’d hung up. Rather rudely, too. But I mean, holy crap, was that ever fun for two little pains in the ass like us! But, boy, did she ever sound scary. Still more fun than poking a hornet’s nest, though.

However, please don’t get the idea I was the only one being an obnoxious little brat with the telephone games. Because I’m here to tell you no, not by a long shot. So many extra Y-chromosome boys my age were also badass contemporaries in the same field. I mean junior high fellas? Bored and with nothing to do? And there was that telephone just sitting there, a toy waiting to be used and abused? Prank phone calls were a sport back then. A craze. And it wasn’t jjst kids, either. Look up “50’s phone pranks “on Google. You’ll see. Oh, and once again, you have to remember: no Caller ID.

There were some, the more creative ones like myself, who were experts at it; and then there were those mealy-mouthed amateurs, sheep basically, just following the pack and repeating what everybody else had been pranking since the caveman days. For instance, dialing a random convenience store number and asking, “Do you have Prince Albert in the can?” And then, if the answer is, “Why, yes, we do,” the low-life prankster/dilettante would shout, “Well… why don’t you let him out so he doesn’t suffocate?” before hanging up, falling on the floor laughing, and laughing himself sick.                      

*Prince Albert being the brand name of a popular pipe tobacco sold in either a soft package or a can

That prank, plus this other most common one, were so overused.“Hello. This is General Electric calling. Is your refrigerator running?” and of course the response to a “Yes” would be, “Well, why don’t you run after it and catch it?” Yeah. Two of the most boring tropes of the 50s. I know, sad, right? Audio memes.

My cousin and I preferred the more interactive scenarios like this one, especially effective when you got a little old lady on the line:

Prankee: “Hello?”

Pranker: (In a low, adult-sounding voice) “Good morning, Ma’am. I’m a representative of the Bell Telephone Company.”

Prankee: “Oh? How can I help you?”

Pranker: “Well ma’am. We’re going through the town today, house by customer house, cleaning out all the phone lines. If you happen to have a paper bag handy, that would be a big help.”

Prankee: “Oh. Actually I do believe I have some paper bags in the cupboard. All right.  I’ll get one and be right back.”

Pranker: “Thanks, ma’am. I’ll wait right here.”

Prankee: (heavy paper rustling) “I’m back. And I do have a bag. What do I do with it?”

Prankee: Please pull the bag right over your telephone handset, then wrap the bag up tightly and hold it firmly. But be especially sure to look away. We blow the dust out of the lines with our heavy-duty power blower, and we don’t to get dust all over your floor or, especially, in your eyes. Let us know when you’re ready.”

Prankee: (really loud paper rustling) (Prankee’s voice sounding fainter now under the rustling) “OK. I think I’m ready…”

Pranker: “OK. Hang on tight!” (Pranker, making a loud, drawn-out, high-pitched WOOOOOOOWEEEEEeeeee! with puckered mouth.) “OK. Ma’am. We’re done. The Bell Telephone Company thanks you for your cooperation in this matter.”

Prankee: “Okey-dokey!” (loud paper rustling) “Ummmm.  There doesn’t seem to be any dust in my bag, though…”

Pranker: “Well done. We commend you on your neat housekeeping, ma’am. And thank you again.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mostly my cousin and I were really just trying to harmlessly amuse ourselves. One time, for whatever reason, we decided we’d conduct an important-sounding survey by calling 30 or so totally random numbers to find out which opera was Dover-Foxcroft’s favorite. Both of us having been brought up pretty much on Mad Magazines (“What, me worry? I read Mad”), I’m guessing that played a part in our play-acting choices. Neither of us knew anything at all about opera, however, other than “The Barber of Seville” soundtrack that accompanied our favorite Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoon. “The Rabbit of Seville”.

Our survey was conducted over the weekend. We kept stats in a notebook. We were all about the stats. Many contacted, like ourselves, had no real idea about operas. But quite a few took us fairly seriously. All I really remember is that Madame Butterfly took 1st place, and The Barber of Seville got a few mentions, as did The Flower Drum Song.

See, we did things like this when there were no Medusa-like distractions like computers and cell phones to turn us into motionless, dead stone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, back to Bugsy’s class unit on Telephone Etiquette…

The two weeks seemed to me such a ridiculous, ho-hum waste of time. However, on the very final day of the unit, things suddenly got pretty tense, and we all found ourselves perking right up. What was happening is that Bugsy had begun to push the class discussion into darker waters. She’d begun shifting the focus to the dire consequences of some very particular improper uses of the telephone. Namely, the evil little practices by some children (why, not us, of course) misusing the telephone in malicious ways. In fact it turned out that what she was getting at, what she was beginning to poke her nosy old nose into, was none other than the misuse of the telephone by willfully committing the unimaginable and heinous  crime of (oh my!) phone pranks!

“Yes, obviously some of you, if not all, have heard about thesee thoughtless telephone pranks, and the harm can cause. The mischievous calling of random numbers, the tricking of innocent victims into believing their caller is someone other than who he really is. Perhaps some of your families have even been the victims of such telephone abuse… or know of someone who has been.”

“Yes!” piped up one of the dumb-bunnyest, most brown-nosing girls in our class. “That happened at our place just last month!” Some of the other girls were nodding vigorously in support. Girls! Jeez!

But yikes. I had hardly expected that particular can of worms to be torn open in this class. And by the most feared teacher on the planet. Here I’d been assuming it was all going to be nothing but the namby-pamby, goody-two-shoes, golden rules we should all follow. But no. Apparently not. Where was she going with this? Did she… Did she know something? I mean, hey…  

Like some hardened Alcatraz inmate, I surreptitiously allowed my gaze to secretly travel around the room, gauging the reactions of my fellow miscreants in attendance who, in turn, were surreptitiously gauging mine. Each of us felons had by now assumed the mask, the bland, know-nothing, poker face. You’ve heard of the Cosa Nostra, the Italian phrase that once referred to the Mafia and which translates literally to “our thing?” Meaning “our secret thing.”

“What many of these so-called pranksters don’t realize is that several instances of prank phone calls fall under the auspices of… criminal behavior.” Somebody somewhere at the back of the class giggled. “Punishable criminal behavior at that!” she added.  Giggling a high-pitched giggle like some little girl. Only it didn’t quite sound like a girl.

“Yes, Arthur?” asked Mrs. Sterling suddenly in her sternest voice. She was never one who liked being interrupted.

 Along with most of the other kids, I cranked my head around for a look-see over my shoulder. And there he was, the fool. Little Artie Buck. Grinning. Squirming in his seat like he had to go to the bathroom. Arm waving high in the air signaling pick me, pick me! Oh, he had something he was just dying to share with the class.

Down went the arm. “OK. So…” he began, almost delirious with remembered joy, “…this one time…? I dialed this number. You know, just for fun?”

What in the world…? The class and Bugsy waited silently while he gathered his witless thoughts. Me thinking, Artie, what the heck do you think you’re DOING!?

“Well, anyway,” he began again, “see, this lady answered.” He was having such a hard time containing himself, overcome as he was by his autonomic giggling system. But oh, he just couldn’t wait to get his wonderful story out of his mouth, so he forged on. “And so I said, ‘Is Frank Walls there?’ And she said, ‘No. I think you have the wrong number.’ ” Then the giggles overtook him once again for a moment before he could go on. But finally: “So I said to her, ‘Then is Pete Walls there?’ And she said, ‘No.’ So then I said, ‘Are there any Walls there at all, then?’ and when she said, ‘No’ to that…” hee-hee-hee “…I asked her…’” and here he really had to contend with one final meltdown of his own hilarity, “ ‘Then… what’s holding up your roof?’ ”

Artie had finished. And he was looking all around the room expectantly. Waiting for the gales of laughter. But the room had gone so electrically silent you could have heard a dust mote touch down softly on the floor!  Every student was frozen stock still. How could Artie have done this to himself? we were asking ourselves. From the look of sudden terror that flashed across his face, that’s what he was suddenly wondering as well. How could he have just forgotten where he was? In the dragon’s lair! Was he just stupid? Or mental? Or both?

Bugsy’s lizard eyes had locked onto Artie’s beating, little bunny-rabbit heart like a pair of talons. She cruelly allowed the silence to go on for too long a time while the clock ticked. And then she said it. It was an Hercule Poirot moment!

“So… that was YOU!”

The class gasped as one! No! Oh my word! Just imagine! Oh my! What are the chances of…?

We watched as Bugsy marched the condemned off to the principal’s office by the ear, leaving us jaw-dropped and utterly rocked. And alone. By ourselves for once. Everyone equally shocked. Some of us, of course,  were secretly relieved. It hadn’t been US. It had been Artie.

Time went by. We’d obviously been forgotten. We all gathered at the window when the patrol car pulled up outside in the faculty parking lot.

We never did find out exactly what happened to him. He wouldn’t talk about it. Whatever it was, it must’ve been bad.

In retrospect, maybe they’d sat him down in front of a movie screen and made him watch a number of black and white public service announcement films on how… Crime Doesn’t Pay.