Puffs

Phone calls . . .

There are still some people around that remember the very early days of phone calls. For us in rural Nebraska that includes “party lines.”

Most every ring of the phone was a time of excitement and anticipation. You could even listen in on other calls if you were on a “party line.”

Phones are just one example of how much things have changed over the years. I don’t have to go into what all those changes are as everyone is familiar with them.

What this is leading up to is all of the phone calls a person receives that they really don’t want to receive. Most involve someone selling something you have no interest in. And, they come in waves.

For the last several months, health insurance companies, or their agent were hitting the phone lines (or air waves, as the case may be) to make sure people (older Americans) knew they could certainly buy their product if they wanted.

Well, that opportunity ended December 7, and you know what? The phone calls stopped. We haven’t had a single call since.

It got so bad that on one day before the deadline, we received five phone calls before 9:30 a.m. Then, in the evening we got calls as late as 9:30 p.m.

Another of life’s little aggravations we live through. We can now look forward to whatever the next promotion will be.

This also reminded me of one other phony phone call I received about a year ago.

A caller said he was calling on behalf of a grandson who was in trouble, needing money to solve his problem. I went along with the call for a little, but then said I didn’t recognize the place the call was coming from and asked the caller for the name of my grandson, since I had several. This put him on the spot and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. He mumbled something about a name I never heard of before and then I said: “sorry, you guessed wrong.”

The phone call ended quickly.

“Technology” . . . it can be used for good or bad.

A O

A recent observation on how much our world has changed.

I had the occasion to be in the hospital E. R. recently and noticed a few changes.

Not so much in the physical appearance of the place, but what was in it.

In the small area I was in, there were 11 people sitting, waiting.

Eight people were glued to doing something on their phones (not talking). One person was reading a newspaper, one person was reading a book and one person seemed just too sick to do much of anything.

I remember the days when any ‘waiting room’ in any medical facility was filled with “old” magazines and a few toys for the youngsters.

There was not a single magazine in this room.

Some things do not change. A person can always tell if they are in a ‘small town’ E. R.

A number of years ago, I was in the Red Cloud hospital. In the hallway of the E. R. sat a box of tomatoes. (It was the end of summer, so that was not out of place.)

This recent visit was in Hastings and one of the people in the waiting room was a young man with boots on with a good amount of cow manure on the heel.

Some things change, some things don’t . . . except for how a person is remembering just where they live.

Life is good, enjoy it wherever you are.

A O