TELEPHONES AND KIDS CAN MAKE FOR A WRONG NUMBER

Telephones and children don't mix well.

Every parent has suffered through the telephone tantrums.

Joni and I can seldom carry on a conversation without one or both of our daughters acting up.

Five-year-old Becca and 1-year-old Bailey play well together at times.

But once the phone rings, it's a free-for-all.

The other day, I was home alone with the kids when the phone rang. I barely had answered the phone when Bailey started screaming in her "hold-me-or-I'll-yell-louder" voice.

It's great for getting rid of annoying bill collectors, but it makes regular telephone talk difficult.

Fortunately, we have cordless phones. That way Joni and I can race through the house, trying to talk on the phone and stay one room ahead of the crying, fighting and other childhood catastrophes.

But sooner or later -- if the conversation lasts more than 30 seconds -- we end up trapped in one of the bedrooms, listening to the cries of our children and wondering what the person on the other end of the line just said.

If your children are going to do somersaults off the couch and land loudly on their heads, they'll do it while you're on the phone.

As a parent, I often feel like I'm trying to hold a conversation in the middle of a three-ring circus.

What is it about the ring of the phone that sends kids into hysterics and forces moms and dads to make threatening hand gestures?

I don't know, and neither do other parents I've talked to.

It's all Alexander Graham Bell's fault.

Before he invented the device, there weren't any telephone tantrums. In letter-writing days, parents could at least edit out bad behavior.

Bell taught deaf students in Boston, which might explain why it never occurred to him that the ring of a telephone might call up chaos.

On March 10, 1876, Bell spoke the first words ever uttered over a telephone. Historians say he cried out to his assistant, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you!"

But since Bell had just spilled battery acid on his clothes, I suspect his first words weren't anything that nice or even a complete sentence.

Soon after, kids came down with the telephone temper. Family life hasn't been the same since.

It's predicted that some day we may all be talking on picture phones. Such devices already are being tested in some areas.

As a parent, I can't imagine anything more horrifying.

Imagine trying to talk to a friend on the picture phone while in the background your children are having a tug-of-war over a Barbie doll or drawing crayon pictures on the living room wall?

It's bad enough that the party on the other end can hear the screams. Imagine how it would be if they could really see what was happening?

The solution, in my mind, would be a phone that could turn a telephone tantrum into a peaceful, easy feeling or at least show a picture of my kids playing quietly together.

I'd call myself if I could be assured that kind of picture.

Otherwise, I might just have to disconnect the phone.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.