My grandparents lived on a ranch, and in the 70s their telephone was a party line.  Which was a telephone line used by multiple families and prone to party crashing depending on who you shared the line with.  Unlike group video chat today, you did not have the choice of who was invited to your party, nor did you have any other path to communicating until all attendees hung up and left the party.

When I would visit my grandparents the first thing I wanted to do was call my cousins that lived up the country road and announce that I was there. Upon my arrival I would race to the avocado-green telephone, hanging on the wall near the dining room window, and pick up the handset silently praying I would hear a dial tone.

Instead, more often than not, what I would hear was the gravelly smokers-voice of my grandparents’ neighbor and some other un-identified stranger contentedly chatting away. Completely impervious to the fact that I was there, and unaware that the only thing I had to look forward to for the past two hours, while I drove cross country with nothing more than my little sister’s incessant game of i-Spy to keep me occupied, was this phone call.  At which point my heart would sink and I’d resign myself to hanging up the handset and waiting in defeat until my turn.  Of course, I could just sit on the line and sigh heavily making everyone aware I was there, but that would be against party line etiquette.

After picking up the phone every 30 seconds for what seemed like an eternity, at last I’d hear the dial tone I longed for. My turn to use the phone line had finally arrived.

I would then painstakingly begin the tedious process of using the rotary dial to enter one number at a time, waiting in between as the dial returned to its starting point before I could enter the next digit.  Finally finished, I would wait with all the pent-up excitement of a 10-year old, anxious to at last hear my cousins voice, only to have a disheartening but distinctive busy tone come crashing through the handset. Signaling one of my cousins’ family members, or worse yet, one of their neighbors, was already on their party line.  Resigned yet again to my communication purgatory I knew my choice was to hang up and wait, risking losing my turn on my grandparent’s line, or give up and walk the 15 minutes to my cousins’ house hoping they were home when I arrived.

In 1978 the phone was a true test in patience and tenacity. Character building, in fact.

My parents had a private line, but the only real privacy was if you were home alone.  By the time I was a teen we had two telephones. Both tethered to the wall of course, as wireless had not been invented, and centrally located so the entire family could access them easily and hear every word you had to say.  My bedroom was not close enough to either phone to drag the cord up the stairs and close my bedroom door. The only way to get any sort of privacy was to use the kitchen phone that could just reach the garage and close the door as much as possible with a cord sticking out of it. Completely aware that anybody could pick up the other phone at any moment and eavesdrop on my conversation.  Every teen’s worst fear.

In hindsight, I’m saddened that my GenZ children did not have the opportunity to experience these rights of passage.  If for no other reason than the fact that It is so much more effort, and in some cases simply impossible to eavesdrop today. By all rights it’s my turn and I’ve earned it as a parent. Definitely an oversight by our peers responsible for inventing much of the technology we use today. Damn that Millennial that invented Snapchat.

In the 70s, home phones were often the only tool to reach people remotely. Until the mid 80s it was unusual for a home to have an answering machine. Mine was no exception. Therefore, my sister and I were trained on the proper etiquette of answering and taking a message.  We were told to say, “Hello, this is Stacey”. If they asked for one of us by name we would reply with, “yes this is she” or “he” not “her” or “him”.  We were taught to take a message, to write it down, and always read it back, saying thank you and goodbye before hanging up.  There was no better compliment than another adult telling my parents that they had spoken with me on the telephone and were so impressed with how polite and thorough I was.

Voicemail and smartphones have changed all of this. Today if our home phone (yep, we still have a home phone – ok so it is VoIP) is ringing my children do not flinch. In fact, I have never witnessed them answering it at all.  When I ask why they do not answer the phone when it is sitting right next to them ringing, they shrug with a simple, but admittedly accurate reply, “It’s not for me.”  In addition, if I suggest to my own teenage children that they make a phone call, as opposed to sending a text, my recommendation is returned with a look of astonishment, and a faint glimmer of fear in their eye.

Texting was not really something I personally had much interest in until my own children were tweens and received their first smartphones. Sure, I’d use it for work to let people know I was on my way to a meeting, or a quick message to tell somebody I sent an email they should see, but never for a conversation.

I finally gave into the art of communicating with my thumbs when it became obvious that my i-Gen offspring were not programmed to respond to a ringing phone requiring them to push a button and speak out loud. However, a buzz or bing notifying them that a text had arrived was like offering steak to a puppy, instantly triggering lots of wiggling and squirming to get to it. In addition, my odds of getting a reply went up substantially.  The odds improved even more with each emoji I added.  Best of all, their replies often included details beyond a one-word reply, albeit infiltrated with a lot of acronyms that required some research to decode, but on a good day ending with, ILY.  The good news is, I’m a Gen-Xer, and we are resilient, we know how to adapt, and we are willing to do whatever it takes to communicate.  If my kids could have an entire conversation with their thumbs, so could I.

I am one of the more than 8 million people that work from home in the US today, a trend that will continue to grow across all demographics.

In this remote environment real-time communication with any depth can be tricky. I’ve found that most people are fine with a scheduled conference call, especially if they know a crowd will be on the line.  But an ad hoc, unplanned, one-on-one phone call is another matter entirely.  I can almost see the eye rolling when I’m in mid text or IM with somebody younger than 35, and I suggest that I call them rather than continue texting.  Usually a pause, followed by, “Sorry, now is not a great time. I’ll send you a quick IM or put something on your calendar when I’m free. ttyl”.  To which I suppress the instinct to reply with a simple, “SMH”.

Video chat has turned all this on its head yet again. Amazingly, my GenZ kids and the Millennials I work with seem completely at ease with an ad hoc video call over Slack, Zoom, or FaceTime.  This I am somewhat confused by, but grateful for.  My own college aged son, that lives 2000 miles away, who could not be bothered to answer a telephone, seems happy to participate in FaceTime Sunday.  It makes saying good bye temporary, and distances dissolve. Whether it be my in-laws in the Netherlands, or UK, or saying goodbye to our recent exchange student from Latvia who we all grew to love, it’s all a bit easier, and our lives a bit richer because of today’s technology.  Expanding our world and family infinitely just because we know we can, and will see them real-time, anytime.

Smartphones are addictive, and you are never truly alone with your own kids, because there is always a crowd lurking behind the screen in their hand. But, they also make communication both timeless and borderless.  For better or for worse, the ubiquity of the smartphone and the accessibility of social media has revolutionized the way we communicate and access information, and there is no turning back now.

No generation said ever, “I wish I could communicate just like my parents did.”  So, if we want to stay connected to the generations in front of us, we may as well join the party and download the latest video chat app.  Frankly it won’t be a problem, because we are Gen-X, resilient, adaptive communicators.