The phone would not ring.  I told myself at the time that I’d just missed his call or that the phone had been busy when he called.  My parents, being at the time the most horrible parents in the world (solely because they took breath and I was in middle school) did not have call waiting nor an answering machine.

By the time I was in high school, I had my own phone line with an answering machine.  The boy (surely a different boy by now) still didn’t call; but I told myself that he merely had not left a message on my machine.  The thought that he had no idea who I was or was not remotely interested in me never would have crossed my mind — well, until it did cross my mind and I melted into puddles of tears and teen angst drama.

By the time I was out of college, the invention of caller id was new and on the market.  I had to have it — even then a budding tech addict.  Surely now, I’d see that all the men who I was sure were interested in me were calling and not leaving messages.

Somewhere in my early 20’s, I had the life altering realization — the boys were NOT calling.  It wasn’t that they did call and I missed them, it was that they just weren’t calling.  It was then (and for a few years after that) that I wanted to shun all technology.  You see, it was the invention of the answering machine that allowed us to know someone wanted us to call them back.  It was the invention of Caller-ID that let us know that they had called in the first place.  It was those same inventions that allowed you to know that someone didn’t want you to call them back or that they hadn’t called at all.  It stopped allowing you to create ego soothing excuses for the lack of a date on a Saturday Night.

In those same years, cell phones were growing from bricks in bags (I totally dated a boy who had a phone in a bag off his shoulder — I wish I was kidding — but I’m not) to things so small I now regularly put it in my back pocket.  Then we discovered that we could forward our home phones to our cell phones or get rid of home phones entirely.

In short, technology has allowed us to be overly accessible.  And I’m not just talking about cell phones here.  How many of us Tweet, Facebook, blog, or otherwise share publicly facets of our lives?  We create our own spotlights these days and yet there has been no greater desire for privacy.

I’ve got to tell you that I think the Queen Mum thinks I’m nuts when I wonder aloud why do I have to get so much e-mail or why do I feel like Grand Central Station’s switchboard some days.  In her smile (and frankly, she’s probably laughing at me), she is thinking, “Girl, if you weren’t so out there, people would leave you alone.”  And I’m thinking, “Did you see my Myers-Briggs score lately?”  I digress.

I think about this often really.  Duke will grow up in a world where people seem to talk less and communicate every little detail of their life. (I have a friend whose son is nearly driving age and since he is my friend of Facebook, I know when this kid eats, sleeps, has insomnia, and when his dad takes him shopping for shorts.  I’ve never known so much about a teenaged boy — even when I was a teenaged girl.) Duke will also grow up in a world where everyone is instantly accessible.  When once it was totally ok to wait 3 days to get a call back, an hour seems too long.

As a self-confessed tech-geek, I love the things we can do now that years ago was myth.  When I sat by my princess phone — it had no Disney Princesses on it.  My phone had a rotary dial and could break toes if dropped, I could not have ever imagined the ability to know so much about a person — and yet so little.

But you know the truth — the truth is, I think we know less than we ever knew before.  Because e-mail and texting is easy, we don’t share the things we used to share.  Because our world expanded to more people, we know less about each one.  Our connections don’t seem as deep or as lasting, because they are easy.  When we had to work at it, did we invest more of ourselves in each moment.  We shared more, we gave more, we truly bonded. We may not have talked about what we had for lunch, but we bonded.  I think about my great-grandmother — she knew the art of visiting.  You could go to her house and sit in the front room and just visit.  You could be there for 30 minutes or hours and she’d chat and you’d chat.  You’d leave thinking you’d really shared something and I can tell you that she was more connected with the world around her than any interwebs would allow.  It was because she understood (and practiced) two things: She knew people and how to bond.

So, I’m challenging you (and myself) to step away from the keyboard, to write an old fashioned letter to someone (with a real stamp — it might help the Post Office too), to sit with a cup of coffee and friend and turn off your cell phone.  I challenge you to an hour, single hour, of off time.  Turn off the phone, turn off the computer, don’t text, e-mail, call.  Sit face to face with someone, and learn how to bond again.

I see things piling up around me and feel overwhelmed with the need to do them all right now.  Yet, I know that none of them will get done while I’m contemplating the ceiling.  Yes, it has been one of those days, ok, maybe a week.

Anyway, yesterday, I decided to start to do something about it all.  Of the many things on my list was a need to call a few places to get information about various after school activities for Duke (there are doctors and dentist appointments too — but I am ignoring those for right now).  So, I placed THREE phone calls.  I left messages at all three places regarding what I discussed.  As of this typing, one place has called me back.

One.

Yes, I said one.  That was 24 hours ago.

Now I wonder, do I call the other two back and leave more messages or do I wait, it has been only a day, afterall, or do I call other places since it has been a day. So, I was in this customer service funk, when Prince arrived home yesterday and declared that we were going shopping that evening.  (Seems we need a handsfree bluetooth something or other for our car before July 1st, since there will no longer be talking and driving allowed in the SnarkState (which is fine really, since there won’t be any roads soon enough, with all the state on fire — but still.)

So, we head off.  Place one gave us what I term “typical service”  in other words there was a child (maybe 14) who spoke to us, gave us bland answers to our questions, and never gave us the sense he cared.

We go to place number 2.  We find that they have the peg for the thing we want, but no items of it and the price is about $200 cheaper.  Yes, I typed that correctly.  So we wandered a bit and left thinking we’d return over the weekend.  On the way out, Michael Jackson’s “Pretty Young Thing” was on the music and Duke and I were dancing around a bit.  This guy who worked there walked by and remarked “Never too young to enjoy Michael.”  Which stuck me as totally funny and a little weird.  Well, we got to joking on our way out with him, not thinking anything of it.

In the parking lot, Prince and I discussed the sign and wondered if it was a weekly special maybe we should ask for rain check or something.  So back in the store we go.  We wander to the corner where the item’s sign was and there was NO one to be found.  I stood for a second raging that customer service in the US stinks beyond reason, when ‘Eggo’ (his name from his nametag — no, seriously) rounds the corner and says, “Back so soon?”  It was the same guy from earlier.  I pull the peg with the sign off the display and hold it out to him and say, “I want this.  Well, not the peg, but what the peg was for.  That price is a bit high for just a peg.”  He giggled and said, “but that’s a great peg, totally worth the $200.”  “You price match right, because I can go down the street and get the same peg for $5 and I’d still be over paying.”  Everyone laughed.

So, Eggo and I bonded (I may have suggested that I was going to put him in my pocket and take him home with me and suddenly the price jumped — don’t know why) and Prince and I bought, um, a receipt. (The kit is arriving Friday and will be installed this weekend, so we left with a receipt.  I declare that customer service is NOT dead, yet.  However, it is on life support.

1. Who, other than me, instantly thought of Thelma and Louise when they read Alison’s comment about being hide in the Prius so I can fit in?  And for the record, there are few women in this world I’d drive off a cliff with, of which Alison (who is too amazing to ever commit armed robbery or drive off a cliff) is on my list.
2. Barb, yes — I shall bring you next time — it was truly awesome — though next time I’m bringing my PJs, I’m drinking with the girls, and I may be forced to steal more yarn — because apparently that’s what I do when I’m invited to other people’s houses.

Ok…so back to my story for the evening (which, seriously how exciting is my life that you get two posts today?)..

It dawned on me as I was running errands in prep for the trip, that I might be forced to carry two computers on the trip with me.  You see, I do all my work on a PC laptop and all my fun on my MAC.  You may say, oh, then if you are on vacation then leave the PC at home.  To which I say, great, if you want to explain to women with sharp pointy sticks why I’m not e-mailing them back with answers to their pressing questions (seriously, most of them are packing questions, and I might offer that if you are actually packing now, you may have too much underwear — just sayin’.) then sure.  However, in all seriousness, I do have somethings I need to do in the quiet and I have a few down days built in to do that.  Alas.  Then, I hear that other half of you say, well if you NEED the PC then leave the Mac at home.  My dear, my Mac syncs with the iPod and the iPhone — ’nuff said.  Plus I hold all the photos here and I’m going to try to build an iPhoto book while I’m on the road this year — I’ll let you know how that goes.

So, Prince was out all day while I was seriously thinking over this 2 computer problem.  The second he walks in, I pounce, because I’m totally not the wife who says “welcome home, honey, how was your day.  Come sit.  Here are your slippers and perhaps a drink?”  Oh, no.  I’m the wife who is all, “What are you doing home so early?  And I have a problem that I need you to solve right now — no you may not go to the bathroom first…”  (Yup, that Prince is a lucky, lucky man to have me, let me tell you.)

But this time, the Prince proved why I married him.  He LISTENED to my WHOLE problem and my CONCERNS. (Bonus points on all accounts to that — he only lost a few points because he chose to pee first, but still.)  Then he thought and said, “Long term we need to look into a VPN solution, but for this trip, have you thought about installing Windows on your Mac and transferring the key stuff to the Mac.  You can back-up a few things and then you can move it back when we get back.”  I looked at him with wonder. (First, I had to process through that I might have actually understood the need for a VPN, though I have no idea what a VPN stands for.  Next, I drolled a little over the thought of just needing my Mac. And the bonus to this was that the solution was probably free.)  Alrighty then, tonight I’ll do everything I need to and we can test this plan.

He wandered off and I installed BootCamp.  We had dinner, put Duke to bed, and I asked Prince, “where’s the XP disk?”  He started looking.  He dug through a metric ton of CDs (I even found a box of 3.5″disks –I don’t have a computer that uses them anymore — why do we have a box of blank ones?)  He dug and dug and dug.  I ask him where he saw it last, since it wasn’t in the well labeled pocket in his book of CDs.  “Well, it was on the table upstairs until your parents came to visit.”

SIDENOTE: (This has been one of those little marriage annoyances that we have not been able to sort out in 8 years.  I don’t like my kitchen table to be a dumping ground.  Oh, I am not saying I don’t put things there, but I set things down that tend to be moved within a day or two and I tend to try to sort through my pile regularly.  He, well, Prince tends to use the kitchen table as his filing system.  I offer to you, that if the ‘very important item you are looking for’ was filed on the kitchen table, you take a risk that someone might start throwing it away….just sayin’)

He finally comes up and says, “Here it is, when you start it up you will have to pull a bunch of updates, but it will be ok.”  I didn’t look closely at the fine print from Boot Camp or compare it to what he handed me.

From Prince:  The CD of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1

From the BootCamp Instructions: Use full install disk of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2.  Do not attempt to install an earlier version and upgrade.

Doh!

So, what I was going to do tonight and test tomorrow — will be done tomorrow night and tested oh, tomorrow night — because I have to pack….