Another friend of mine has announced he’s cutting himself loose.
He’s my age. A peer. A former colleague. A friend to this day.
He and his wife are cutting the cord, so to speak, by ending their landline telephone service. I guess they’re going to be a cell phone family.
My wife and I have wrestled with that issue for nearly as long as we’ve owned cell phones, which isn’t as long as most of our peers. We’ve waffled and wavered. We just cannot cut the cord ourselves.
Our sons are cell phone-only telecommunications consumers. They like it that way. They take their phones with them wherever they happen to be.
Us? We remain tethered to the landline.
We’ve had them our entire lives. They have become part of who we are, I reckon.
Do we intend to stay tied to the home phone, the landline for the rest of our lives? I doubt it, strongly.
I’ve noted on this blog about our upcoming retirement plans. They include significant amounts of time on the road. We’ll, quite obviously, be spending less time “at home” and more time in our “home away from home,” our fifth wheel.
Thus, it makes little sense for us to keep the landline. Correct?
I get it. My wife gets it. Our sons no doubt snicker at us for being so, oh, wedded to the old way.
Too bad.
For now and for the foreseeable future, we’re going to stay hooked to the landline. I cannot explain precisely why we want it that way. We just do.
When the moment presents itself, when it’s time to cut ourselves free of the telephone line, we’ll know it when it arrives.
My wife and I recently immigrated to the Pacific Northwest. I had had the same line and phone number for almost 40 years. We had discussed giving up this archaic method of connection in favor of exclusive cell phone dependency.
We thought that we had taken that step until we arrived in Port Angeles and began the connection protocol required with any relocation. Establish city service, electrical availability, internet and cable television……
But wait!
Internet and cable service here includes a home phone with local and long distance.
For free.
Por Nada! Costs the same if you don’t subscribe to a land line. Free long distance.
Duh! They even gave me a phone.
I have to look up my new land line number on my cell phone. Someday I will remember what it is, but as of yet, I am not confident enough to recite it much less dial it. I have called it (on speed dial) when my wife, who incidentally has bad phone etiquette, has become unreachable on her cell phone for whatever reason.
So even though I had the best intentions regarding the elimination of our land line, I have been persuaded to remain connected to the obsolete and inconvenient service of a land line.
Oh well. Maybe later.