Your Call

Brought to you by phone.

Editor's note: Congrats to Chef Jeff on his new gig! WOO!

And now back to our regularly scheduled rambling.

We Midwesterners are an individualistic lot, not necessarily known for our willingness to reach out and touch someone. Stagecoach mail and the Pony Express were plenty good enough for denizens of the Great Plains for quite a while. Now, even though telephone poles outnumber prairie dogs out here in Flyover Land, we still don't talk to one another all that much (although cell phones are changing that habit a bit).

Anyway, we could use a little help using this new-fangled thing called the telephone. To aid the cause, I have drawn upon my vast experience in the field to offer this Midwesterners' Primer on Phone Usage.

1. Know your time zones. If you're in Mountain Daylight Time calling Central Daylight Time, add an hour. For example, although it's 9:00 p.m. at your house in MDT, a reasonable hour for adults to be awake, it's 10:00 p.m. in CDT, at which time adults who have to get up at 6:00 a.m. are thinking about going to bed, so don't be surprised if they sound a little tired.

   
   Conversely, if I get home from work at 5:45 CDT and call you in MDT, expect me to sound puzzled that you're not home. Never mind that it's only 4:45 for you and you probably haven't even left the office yet; if I'm home, everybody should be home, right?

   
   If you're in Phoenix or calling Phoenix, which declines to participate in Daylight Savings Time, forget trying to figure out which time they're using at the moment and just call.

   
   

2. Think happy thoughts. It's tough for Midwesterners to repeat good news; doing so sounds too much like tooting one's own horn, or at least jinxing good fortune. Still, try to leaven the misery. Challenge yourself to relate at least one tidbit that doesn't revolve around the disease or death of any friends, family, crops, livestock, or four-wheel drive vehicles.

   
   

3. Finish the story. I know you save up a ton of news for each call and want to blurt it all out at once, but please try to tell stories one at a time. If you get off on a tangent, return to finish the original thought. Otherwise, how is your listener to know how many trailers the latest hailstorm destroyed?

   
   

4. Have mercy. Portable handsets and cell phones are great, yes, but if you're going to carry yours into the outhouse bathroom, I don't want to hear it and I don't want to hear about it.

   
   

5. Reconnect. If you get a bad connection, perhaps because you're already 50 miles outside the range of the nearest satellite cell out there on the prairie, it's okay to hang up and try again, either from a land line or when you're back in your service area. Conversations consisting entirely of "Can you hear me now?" are only funny on TV.

   
   

6. Pass with care. If you're passing your phone to someone else, warn the person on the other end and tell him whom he's getting. Not every bit of news is appropriate for every ear, you know? (I.e. infected navel piercing/Aunt Mabel. Unless it's her navel, in which case she'll tell you every last gory detail. Shut up, you know she will.)

   
   

7. Limit good-byes to three or fewer. Once we flatlanders have taken the huge step of picking up the phone, we're reluctant to put it down. It's common knowledge that in Middle American English, "good-bye" actually means, "and another thing." However, for those who have been sipping coffee (or whatever) throughout the conversation, the second good-bye acts as a Pavlovian trigger to the bladder. By the time someone starts to insist that she has to go, you can assume that she has to go. Let her.

   
   

8. Turn it off. It's hard to give up that feeling of connectedness once you've achieved it, I know, but there are times when you really do have to turn your phone off or at least ignore its ring. Any time you're talking to someone in person is one of those times. Any time you're on wheels is another. Seriously.

With just a little practice, you too can become a Phone Champ! So polish up your skills: call your mother.

And by the way, I don't have to. Mother Media is at Sensational Acres at the moment, about to board the train and meet me downtown for an urban shopping/dining experience. She anchored the Acres for me during my recent business trip to Texas, in addition to being pretty much the coolest mom ever, so I owe her a night on the town. And then some.

Today around the world: July 11 is Flemish Community Holiday in Belgium.