Chat

By G. E. Shuman

Okay. Here’s the question of the day. Do any of you remember something called party lines? If you do, please raise your hand. Now, please, NOBODY tell me if some people actually just raised their hands. That would be a bit disconcerting. If you are one of the few, or many, who may have raised their hands right now, my advice is to not tell a lot of people about that. I can’t actually see your hands, you know. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that you exist at all. For all I know, I could well be chatting with only myself right now. It would not be the first time.

In any case, including the possible case of my being in a conversation with only me, I do, vaguely, remember party lines. (If you don’t know what they were, please look the term up. I’ll wait for you.) This is mostly due to the fact that a Christian summer camp I attended as a youth was a bit behind the times, technologically, although no one I knew used the word ‘technologically’ back then. The only telephone on the campground, (Yes, we said ’tele’ with phone.) was the one in the ‘office’, and that one was on the aforementioned party line, with about six parties on it, as I remember. I believe we also had a party line at our home when I was very young, but I’m not sure of that. You can call my mother in Florida and ask her. What I am sure of is that, if you had a party line, it could provide very readily-available entertainment. All you had to do was to, as silently as possible, pick up the phone receiver. (I’m not quite sure everyone even knows what a receiver is now, either. Good grief.) As you lifted the receiver you crossed your fingers, in the hope that someone who shared the line with you was already chatting with someone else when you did so, and that they did not hear the ‘click‘ as you picked up. (Come on, seniors. You KNOW you did this, at least once.) This way you could hear all the gossip immediately, right from the source, as it was produced… at the speed of light, in fact. The only way the people who were chatting would know you were there was if you sneezed or produced some other strange bodily sound.

“Mabel! Is that you, listening in on the line? I can hear you breathing. We’re having a private conversation here, sharing prayer requests with each other.” -Click- (They had no way of knowing it was you listening, not Mabel, or just how many of their ‘prayer requests’ you had heard before they discovered you were there.) What could be more fun than that?

When private phone lines came along, things got better, for a time. Or, maybe they just got less interesting. People still chatted, but it took longer for the ‘news’ to get around; you know, one call at a time. And, in all of modern history, it had never been any fun having some fast-breaking excitement on your mind and then having to write it down in a letter to someone. Licking a stamp and then staring at your mailbox for weeks, in hopes of a reply, got to be a bit tedious.

It is an inalterable truth that we humans have always invented ways of advancing, developing, and improving our conveniences, communications, and sin. To me, our present electronic age is proof of all of that. Coincidentally, (not), the Bible says that, in the last days, men will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and that knowledge will increase. The Bible has a habit of making understatements like that.

Now I need, or want, to make my usual case against facebook. The case is that I don’t really believe it is bad, although I have sworn to be the last person in the country to have an account with those folks. Part of my problem with it, personally, is the number of people I know who have said that I HAVE to go on facebook. “Um. No, I don’t have to.” That’s my usual reply. I am quite allergic to any new bandwagon that everyone is jumping on, and will usually avoid it for that reason alone. (I’m not the least bit stubborn. I’m just determined, and I‘m determined that there is a difference.) Another aversion to facebook is that I have seen people hurt by this new, world-wide party line. Facebook, as with any other of mankind’s modern tools, can be used for good, or for evil. Maybe it’s just too convenient a communications tool, and too easily used for that evil option. I will say that if it has caused you or your family any hurt, remember that your computer has a switch to turn it off, and you are free to use that switch, at your discretion. This action is remarkably electronically similar to hanging up that old telephone receiver. A third, but probably not final reason I avoid facebook is the fact that it consumes so much time, which adds to my general apathy toward the whole thing. If I want to waste time I will watch the news.

I leave you today with a simple note of caution in the practice of any and all manner of chat, be it through a person, phone, or pc. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.” (1 Corr. 15:33. The Bible. KJV)