On Telephones That Do Not Work

[avevale_intelligencer]

Glancing out of the kitchen window, I happened to see a child of about seven or eight walking past, talking earnestly into a mobile phone; and it occurred to me that when I was about seven or eight, it would have been a toy telephone (and not a mobile either), but that this one was almost certain to be a real, functional one. And I was overcome by a wave of sadness, not because I had never had a real telephone when I was seven or eight, but because this child had probably never had a toy one.

So great is our hurry to push, pull, drag, throw, bully and cajole children into adulthood these days that we give them all the things we have, and we make sure they work. I have seen little petrol-driven go-karts for the use of toddlers (under supervision, please gods), make-up sets for three-year-olds, computers for babies who have not learned to spell yet, and possibly never will. It can surely only be a matter of time before we start palming off our less pleasurable work on them, and then we will have come full circle; only instead of sending children down the pit or up the chimney, we will sell their eager parents the Kiddy Kall Centre, complete with real telephone on which real customers can call up and arrange their car insurance with Damien, aged six.

I had a car when I was a child. It was blue, and it worked by pedals, and I had a lot of fun with it, and I learned that one's speed is directly proportional to the effort one puts in, a valuable life lesson it took me a long time to unlearn. If it had had an engine, I would have been terrified; but even more disastrously, I would have been deprived of the fun of pretending it had an engine. I also had a toy telephone. It was red, and plastic, and in due course I took it apart and added ping pong balls and turned it into a robot as you do; but before that I had derived far more pleasure from pretending to talk to people on it than I could ever have got from actually talking to people. For one thing, the range of opportunities for conversation is so much wider when one is talking to oneself, on a telephone that does not work.

Similarly, I cannot help but think that if the parents in the excellent song "Mommy, Can I Have A Spaceship?" had presented their preschool child with a fully functioning interstellar probe vessel, the song would have ended rather differently, and possibly much sooner; and the child, if he survived, would very likely have gone to work in a bank instead. The benefits to be gained in childhood from games of "pretend" are too many and various to be listed here, but most of them may be summarised under one general head; the freedom to exercise the imagination to the full in the knowledge that one is safe from the consequences of one's mistakes.

These days are different, of course. No-one is safe, the hedges are heaving with paedophiles, and it is vitally important that a child should be able to call for help on a real phone, zoom off in a real Formula 1 racing car, or in the extreme blow away its assailant with a real Walther PPK. There is no time for games of "pretend." Life is real, life is earnest, and life starts when you learn to walk. The child I saw through the window was probably contacting her broker to adjust her investment portfolio in the light of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But I cannot escape the thought that she might have found it more pleasant, and possibly even more educational, if she had been talking to the man in the moon, on a telephone that did not work.

Comments

[lutos.livejournal.com]

Haha- excellent! And amen, so true. How are kids to develop their fantasy when every thing is indeed functional, but as such limited to the functions given by the producer?
I see my (unfortunately already socially disturbed) neighbour's kids banging on a plastic piano which then translates the banging into Beethoven's 'Moonshine Sonata' or 'Pour Elise'. All day long. Great educational value. :/

[aryana-filker.livejournal.com]

I agree - in some parts.
Some children seem to have forgotten how to play without having tech support for their games.
BTW, I owned a little red plastic telephone when I was little, too, but I did not turn it into a robot. *grin*
I don't like all those baby computers, technical toys and stuff, but I think that, if I'd have a child, I'd give him or her a mobile as soon as he/she goes to school. Not to make the child able to phone all over the world, not to control him, but to make him able to call for help if necessary. I think this is necessary. It's a pity, but it is necessary. let's face it: life IS dangerous these days. I don't want to turn children into little adults without vivid imagination and fantasies and games that need no more than a piece of wood and a puddle of water. But I want children to be safe. And maybe having a mobile to call parents/siblings/reltives in a difficult situation can make a child's life a bit more safe.
So I won't blame the mobile. I blame those parents who give their children things, expensive things, expensive toys, instead of time and love.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

James: "When can I have a mobile phone?"

Us: "When you're old enough and doing things for which we judge you need one. Or sixteen, whichever comes sooner."

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Jared asked continually from the age of 9 or 10. I said that he didn't need one, and wouldn't be bought one until he had enough money to service the contract himself.

On his first day at secondary school in Grantham (a 45 minute bus ride away) he couldn't find the bus stop, got so panicked that he lost his return ticket and took so long to figure out that he was in a hopeless situation needing adult intervention that he only *just* found a school-employed adult before they all left the site. If he'd left it another couple of minutes I have no idea how he would have contacted me as he didn't have money for a payphone...

We bought him a mobile phone the next day, and it's the best damn £14 I've spent on him.

£10 credit lasts six months, and over the course of the past year he has called to let me know that buses have broken down, drivers have been taken ill and routes cancelled. He has let me know when unscheduled rehearsals have taken place at school, and very usefully - what programme item he was in at Eastercon in a big hotel.

Once they have to travel any distance on their own, the lack of worry is worth the very small price.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That could be done with a destination-locked mobile phone which only makes phone calls. Program a set of destinations (home house line, parents' mobiles, possibly the school reception -- note that the emergency 999/112 can't be blocked) into fast-dial keys and lock off everything else. That would still give the security without having all of the expensive bells and whistles and it being a distraction (it coudn't be used to send text messages to other kids in class, for instance, or to photograph other kids in compromising situations). That way it would also make it less of a target, because it would be useless for anyone else.

It isn't just kids, though. I've been apalled at the number of adults who are terrified about being out of touch for even a few hours these days. I've worked in places where mobile phones are not allowed (when the place is dealing with radio calibration etc. you don't get to operate your own radio transmitter!), and the complaints from some of the staff were horrendous. "I need to be callable by my wife!" Why, was she pregnant or ill or something? Not at all, they were just used to calling each other a dozen times every day during work hours! It wasn't as though there weren't other methods of getting in contact, every desk had a phone and in any emergency there would have been no problem calling the switchboard and getting put through.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Yes, you could program and lock a phone. Or you could give your kid a phone with limited credit and *trust* them.

I'm pleased to say that my trust has been repaid on this front.

And I don't think that being welded to a mobile phone is the fault of the technology - it's rudeness.

[nelladarren.livejournal.com]

That's SO true!

There must have been manner issues with other new technologies before - just think "cars vs horse carriages" and then the first telephones... but back then it took so long for a new technology to really spread and was for a looong time unavailable for the vast masses that the social manner codex had time to be imposed on people's behaviour. Now today one great new technology chases the other and society hasn't really had time yet to educate its slower and duller members who wouldn't pee into a corner publicly but haven't understood yet how to handle their mobiles.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I should point out that the subject of this post has nothing to do with how adults behave with their technology, nor with the etiquette of mobile phone use.

[jahura.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. Last week I met a mother whose infant son (19 months!) was serenely watching his favorite show on an iPod. To me, that's even sadder than the phone, for at least with the phone you reach out to the world rather than withdraw from it. And yet I cannot help but wonder what effect today's technologies will have on these children as adults.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, one is as withdrawn from the world when talking to oneself on a toy telephone as one is with an iPod. I think children need some time away from the world in order to learn how to deal with it. But of course, it should be clear that that is what it is. Watching telly, on an iPod or whatever, gives one the fact of withdrawal with the illusion of connection, which is not good.

[lutos.livejournal.com]

Watching the television or the iphone is also very passive, while talking to an imaginary friend on your plastic phone is an active process of fantasy. Huge difference, in my eyes.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Probably. When I was young, as I remember it, my parents made very little distinction between the two kinds of activity; neither was "real." I was never discouraged from watching telly or playing games with my imagination, but it was a matter for concern for them that I spent so much time "in my head" and not in the "real" world. I suppose some of that attitude must have rubbed off on me. I think the idea that an active process of fantasy was a good thing came along a lot later.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

The great virtue of talking on a toy telephone is the amazing quality of conversation you get from the people on the other end. Much better than in Real Life(TM).

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Following on from my comment to Mike:

In the old days, I too, had a toy phone. I would also go out to play with my friends and lose track of the time. The toy phone did absolutely nothing to negate the terrified panic of my mother who had no idea where I was, and resorted to marshalling all my relatives in a street-by-street search (of quite a large town).

A mobile phone call would have done away with so much worry.

The simple truth isn't that there's anything wrong with a mobile phone or the way that a child is using it. There's lots wrong with sloppy and lazy parenting of people who give their children things with no thought as to how they will be used. If the child is talking rubbish to their friend in the next street, then that's one thing. If they are saying, "And then this nice old bloke asked me to go with him to check whether the kittens in his house were sick... Can I go?" - it's a whole different ballpark.

My children have lots of tech. It would be hypocritical of me to say no without good reason when I spend a good chunk of my life on a computer. My 12 year old has a mobile phone. My daughter loves to listen to music on my iPod, and we have "Enchanted" loaded onto it for long car journeys (I don't see the virtue in being bored - I had to be bored for hours in cars and I still don't see any virtue in it. I-Spy sucks just as hard now as it did then.).

But the computer, iPod and phones are completely forgotten in the face of a REALLY BIG CARDBOARD BOX or the only thing to rival it - A PILE OF BUILDER'S SAND. These are the things that constitute *hours* of enjoyment, despite the fact that they have all the tech that they want. I don't think it's a feature of my radically wonderful parenting style either - it's a trait I see in many children I come into contact with.

Unimaginative toys are no replacement for the other stuff, true, but I'm guessing that most kids would agree with you. Kids don't get bored of climbing trees, playing conkers or flying spaceships to Mars (although mine were always more fond of being dinosaurs - not so big on the space theme) in unfeasibly large supermarket boxes. Sometimes they haven't been shown how to play with these things, and that's entirely down to the adults raising them.

If you aren't prepared to pretend to be a dinosaur, or a martian, or make a box into a Wendy House, or climb a tree, or make up stories about knights and why they like jelly... Well, frankly, I can't see why someone like that would want a child in the first place! The whole *point* of having children is so that you can rediscover playing again!

[lutos.livejournal.com]

I think there's is a virtue in being bored - it is learning patience, and tranquility from virtual or audio influences.
You see what happens when the power goes out - people (me included) are angry at first, then they have no idea what to do (especially when it's dark outside), then slowly there's a time of rethinking of other things to do. Power failures are my time of doing things under candlelight that I usually claim never to have the time for.

A mobile phone for emergency - I'll understand that. Going out with a befriended family and spending the rest of the dinner watching the kids sending messages or pics or Dad taking phonecalls from friends is not my idea of ideal communciation with people.:p

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Sadly, when on a long car journey, boredom does not teach my children patience. It makes them torture each other and scream.

I deal *very* badly with boredom, and I don't think it has ever taught me anything. I'm very capable of turning off tvs, stereos and computers etc. and reading, playing a game or making music. I do it very regularly. I am, however, a kender by nature and firmly convinced that if there is such a thing as "hell" then for me, it will consist of a blank room with nothing at all in it. For all eternity. *SHUDDER*

Reading in a car was never an option for me, neither is anything with a screen - anything that keeps my eyes still whilst my body is moving (however slightly) makes me throw up in very short order. I'm a big fan of car stereos for this very reason!

[aunty_marion]

Oh, we were all lucky! None of really tended to get car-sick, so the first stop on any longish journey was the newsagent, for a selection of comics or magazines (usually something different from the ones we took every week); and we were happy to have an I-Spy book with us and try and tick off things from those. Playing 'I-spy' (the game), though, was not usually popular. But there were other amusements, like making up words from cars' registration plates, and 'sixpence for the first one to see a rabbit/the sea/Kirkby church spire/whatever". And - I'm a generation older than you, nearly, I think! - we didn't have any sort of radio in the car, unless Dad brought his portable along, with the special aerial extension that hooked onto the window.

I can't remember for my sisters particularly, but I've always been happy just watching the scenery go past out of a window; I can be making up stories, or thinking about other things at the same time.

[pola-bear.livejournal.com]

I do mostly agree, though I think what Annie says is important.

Recently I was at a friend's house and one of our friends brought out a program on his laptop called baby smash (basically when any of the keys are mashed noises and sounds come up). Another friend's 14 monnth old daughter played with this and is amused her, but no where near as much as playing with the various plastic fruit with velcro did when she went back to that.

Although, unlike annie, I personally still love I spy!

[nelladarren.livejournal.com]

I liked reading your essay here a lot - that's really what I love with blogs, that they enable us to base our trains of thoughts on observations we made the other day and share it with others (and to post shitloads of pictures ;oD).

Concerning the mobile issue I rather agree with those saying it's a relief to have in case of emergency. But I still think that covers a completely different situation since the girl you saw obviously was in no kind of distress but leisurely talked to someone while walking.

The first thing that came to my mind was that the time I spent as a child walking to and from school was always filled with thoughts, songs and dreams - something you definitely don't have if you're on the phone 24/7. Up to a certain age I hummed and sang on my way home (not in the morning, though. :o) and I thought out stories.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I did the same. But then, if I'd had a phone I don't think I would have necessarily wanted to call anyone on the way to or from school (particularly as just about everyone I knew was *at* school), and a call from anyone would have been an annoyance. I was an antisocial brat by preference.

I suppose it comes down to individual differences in the end.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Agreed, on many points, but I will be getting my daughter a mobile when she becomes more independent.

We are lucky to have a very imaginative child. Yes, she watches TV, but then she goes away and puts some of the images and ideas into long and complicated games of her own, or shared with her friends. Her room is a catastrophe of Playmobil, Barbies (ugh) and toy animals, all engaged in five-volume epics.

She loves inventing stories, but isn't able yet to write them down as she wishes. I'm thinking about getting her an MP3 recording device so she can record her stories and bestiary descriptions and so on. (I went to a PNEU school between the ages of 5 and 8 - we dicteted our exam answers for things like history and geography and creative writing and so on, as we were so much more orally articulate at that age than we were capable of expressing ourselves in written form.)

A propos of the telephone, did yours have a white plastic curly wire? Mine did. I used to talk to Captain Kirk quite a lot, I think.

[howeird]

Just because an 8-year-old child has a working cell phone doesn't mean he didn't have a toy one which he grew out of at three. I know I ceased to be amused by those by the time I was in Kindergarten. By then my sister had taught me to read, and we would spend after-playtime hours on the livingroom floor with pencils and paper, collaborating on satires of songs and poems and writing some of the best science fiction stories ever. :-)

Had mobile phones been invented then, my parents would have gotten us one each, because by the time I was six, we were both tying up the one home phone talking to friends. There were fights.

My nephew was using his mother's Mac when he was three. He made a birthday card for me with Pagemaker. He's now a programmer for a major defense contractor and going for his master's in CS. Outside of work he's a fairly normal guy except for all his girlfriends (he's a serial monogamist) being large and blonde. He has about 150 friends on Facebook, all of them he know IRL, mostly from college, and he joins his sportscaster father and superfan mother every year to see baseball spring training in Arizona. His MySpace page documents his tour of Ireland when he was 18, beer by beer. I don't think all his high tech baby toys did him any harm.

[aunty_marion]

I don't actually remember having a play phone, but we certainly weren't allowed to use the home phone. It was (almost) exclusively for Dad's work purposes, and for other important things like calling workmen if anything needed repairing, and, in later years, contacting family members to arrange visits (most of them lived about 50 miles away, a non-trivial distance in the UK). And it lived in Dad's study, so if we dared to use it to call a friend or boyfriend (or they dared to call us!), we could see the pound signs ticking up behind Dad's eyes. We were all well aware that phone calls Cost Money.

As a result, I never really got comfortable using a phone till I was in my late teens/early twenties; OTOH, I'm not now an over-user of my mobile.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Wow, lots of comments.

Obviously I am not here intending to say that any particular set of parents have brought their child up wrong, or that I know a right or a wrong way to do it, because that would be overreaching myself to a degree. IANAP. And if we had had mobile phones when we did our exchange trip to Germany in 1971 I probably would not have panicked everybody quite so much when I got lost in Berlin. All this is quite true. But I still think, and it's nice to see that some of you agree, that there is something in what I'm saying.