Without a telephone – is this possible?

(DE): In the 5th grade, in 1964, we were asked by our teacher to write an essay about how we imagine the future. I went into the thick of it and talked about electric dishwashers, automatic self-cooking hobs, self-propelled cars and a telephone where the conversation partners can see each other. My teacher attributed my flourishing technical imagination to my father’s profession. He was an electrician.

In 1964 all adults smiled mildly at the imaginative child. Today, a schoolchild would no longer be credited with an exuberant imagination for these “visions”. My ideas of yesteryear have long since become reality.

In 1959 ist was a dream vor me to have a telefone by my own.

Recently, I started skyping with my former best friends from my school days in the ’60s. We all live somewhere else now, in London, Regensburg, Munich, but our conversations still last as long as then when we put our heads together and gossiped about our more or less scandalous secrets.

To see each other and talk to each other over long distances is a gigantic achievement, no question about it.

Nowadays everyone has a telephone, almost everyone has a mobile phone, which is closely connected to you like an additional organ.

I have seen students and parents become hysterical because the child has lost his

or her mobile phone or it has been taken away from him or her for improper use.

"I don't like to be without a mobile phone!"

The standard saying of the older colleagues was succinct: “Well, what would we have done in the past without a mobile phone!” Then they hurried away with their mobile phones pressed against their ears.

The question, rhetorically intended, of course, remained unanswered, but it is still interesting.

What was it like without a mobile phone? 40-year-olds certainly still remember it vaguely. Clearly less comfortable. But without a telephone - is this possible?

Is it imaginable that there was a time when people who are still living today didn’t even have a telephone at their disposal?

It is, dear people, it is!

In the 50s and 60s, every Saturday evening my grandmother would look for coins in her purse and take them to the phone box at the end of the street. There was already a small queue of people waiting who wanted to use the phone to call relatives somewhere in Germany. In the phone box it stank of cold cigarette smoke, rubber and other undefinable things, which one would rather not worry about. My grandmother used to call her daughter in Frankfurt, who was married to a bank director and therefore had her own telephone from an early age.

My parents, my grandparents and the rest of the relatives lived without a telephone in the multi-family houses spread all over the city. But the question is, how did they manage to get together with family members and friends who were not colleagues? By letter? During chance meetings while shopping or strolling? Not at all? Without a telephone - is this possible?

Who would be standing in front of the door unexpectedly?

It happened again and again, for example, that the doorbell rang on a Saturday evening. The family looked at each other helplessly. One went and opened; the rest listened. The family member who opened the door called out in a positive surprise and extra loud: “Ja, Friedl, Werner, Rosi, Franz…., how nice that you are here!” In the living room, suddenly, accompanied by muttered curses, a hectic hustle and bustle began. Shaking up cushions, arranging clothes, adjusting seating furniture etc. Then everyone hurried into the hallway for a joyful greeting. The question of the visitors, if they were not disturbing and suggestion they would only stay for a short time anyway, was answered in the negative and fended off. The guests were forced to sit down and make themselves comfortable. What could one offer to drink? Pretzel sticks and other snacks, which no household should be without, came naturally to the table without asking. After a few minutes, everyone was relaxed and was gossiping about everything and after a few hours, the unexpected guests went home satisfied with this nice evening. Even the involuntary hosts mostly agreed that it had been daft and perhaps inconvenient, but also nice. Somehow, in the past, it was possible to live better with contradictions.

"Kiss my ass, the Regensburgers are here!"

Conversely, one behaved in exactly the same way. So, it happened that my parents and I with my grandparents decided on a Sunday to visit our relatives (great-grandmother and grandfather, great-granddaughters and uncles), who all lived in an old rental house in Augsburg. We squeezed ourselves into my father’s VW Beetle, together with the cake my grandmother made to bring as a guest gift. We had also got up very early, actually in the middle of the night, to unite with the Augsburg family in the morning, who had no idea of their bliss. When we finally rang the doorbell at the front door and, beaming with joy, held our cake towards the windows on the first floor, my great-grandmother’s face appeared curiously in the window. Her facial features slipped away from her and she called out in horror into the flat behind her: “Kiss my ass, the Regensburgers are here!

Everybody laughed. No one was offended. The Sunday roast was big enough for everyone and you always had something up your sleeve for just such cases. There was plenty of cake, a liqueur and even a joint Sunday outing. Yes, spontaneously were our ancestors!

With accessibility, real togetherness became complicated.

Nowadays you have a lot of problems with finding the right date. And nobody assumes any more that people are at home on Sundays. Social contacts are completely different. Conversations, whether it’s an exchange of information, ideas or feelings, take place on the phone or via social media. And even if you want to meet in person, making a prior appointment by phone is a must. Anything else would be rude or undesirable and considered an infringement.

When was the last time a neighbour rang your doorbell just to drop by for some advice? Most of us would probably be so dismayed that we would forget to invite our willing to talk neighbour in.

My grandmother had one or two of her neighbours drop by several times a week. They sat together and talked about the past. Sometimes there was coffee, sometimes nothing. Just being together!

Even on the other side of the world, you can now sit together with family and friends back home. Who still needs local friends?

With a mobile phone, you can only make phone calls or write messages, not be together and that is a big difference.

Thank God technological development has made my childhood vision come true. Talking to each other, laughing, seeing each other, makes it possible to have a lively friendship over a greater distance.

And when the children move out into the world and perhaps live and work in the USA, Asia or Australia, they can stay close to family and friends. But as always in life there is a price.

While those who escaped the nest in my generation, the 50s and 60s, were very much alone in a foreign country, today’s globetrotters and emigrants still hang on to their parental umbilical cord via the Internet. The pressure to get involved with the country and its people is thus considerably less. As a consequence, it may take a little longer to take root and integrate, and the connection may be less deep and less binding. Who knows?! (TA)