JOY ALONG THE WAY: TROUBLESOME TELEPHONE ELECTRONIC CONVERSATIONS

I do most of my telephoning with my cordless telephone. When I can find it. Once it was tangled in the clematis vine where it had fallen from a porch railing. Again it was found in the garbage container, having been hidden in a roll of the big, perused, Sunday paper and, unknowingly, thrust there. Even with the finder ring it was hard for me to locate it that time.

My alter ego demands, "Why don't you put it back where it belongs?" I answer with the ubiquitous statement, "That's a good question." Perhaps it is because so many of my attempted calls out are frustrating, I tend to slam the receiver down wherever I am.

Another thing. I dial a correct number and am given a rapid choice of buttons to push to connect me with whom I wish to talk. The electronic voice advises me to punch button number 1 if I want this, button number 2, if I want this other. And so on with all the other numbers, plus, "Push pound."

With the cordless telephone one has to take the phone away from the ear to see the proper button to be pushed. Meanwhile, you hear the mechanical voice going on with other choices, two or more of which you've missed while removing the receiver so you can see what button you're pushing.

Therefore, I must push a lot of false buttons or such a conflicting number of them that the electronic voice ceases and a human voice asks, "How can I help you?" By that time I've almost forgotten how anyone can help me.

Then there's all the free music one listen to while waiting to be connected with the right department. I'm not good at recognizing music unless it is from some of the old, well-known, popular songs or compositions. If the musical tapes I must listen would only say what the songs were and the names of the composers, I'd soon have a Marvelous Minor Degree in Electronic Telephone Music.

That would look impressive on a resume -- MMETM (another acronym for Joe to struggle with. I, too, dislike these things, the purpose of which, I suppose, is to save space, or hurry along the spoken word. Our lovely English language is receding toward hieroglyphics).

One other frustration with telephoning, when making a business call to lodge a complaint, you seldom get to lodge it. When you tell "them" what the problem is, you are told to "please hold until one of our representatives is available." So I hold, and hold and hold, listening to the repeated message every two minutes, accompanied by unknown music, of course. Once I laid the receiver down and came back to it thirty minutes later only to hear, "Please hold. All our ... "

"They" either don't want to talk to you or all the Reps have gone on vacation.

What have I learned from this? Something mean, I think. When someone wants to tell me about some ocean front property in Florida I can have, free, if I'll only answer the question, "Who was our first president?" I can say, "Please hold while I think about this." lay the receiver down and go on a mini-vacation.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.