By Jefferson Weaver
It took me a few minutes before I began to suspect that Steve wasn’t Steve.
I was working on a story that required a call to the National Weather Service. Since people never seem to stay still for more than a few minutes, Weather Wizard Steve Pfaff and I have been communicating mainly by email for most of the past year. Neither of us are proud of that fact, but such is often the price of eating in a modern age.
Steve asked me (in an email) to give him a call, so I did; and then things got complex.
I had forgotten that Steve works with another Steve, technically a Stephen, who is also a weather wizard. Stephen just happened to be at the desk where Steve’s phone rang, and naturally, answered, and identified himself
as Steve.
I figured, what with the passage of that massive storm front the other day, that Steve was just distracted. I’m bad for multi-tasking when I’m on the phone, too, so I figured Steve, err Stephen, was just busy. I was also trying to figure out why his voice didn’t sound, well, like Steve.
In a few minutes, though, we both realized that Stephen wasn’t who I was looking for, even though he had the information I needed and answered to Steve. It made for a good laugh all the way around, and a better indication of how the convenience of electronic communication has more than its share of downfalls.
It made me feel a little sorry for a couple of my elementary school teachers. For two, if not three years, they dealt with two Jeffreys and one Jefferson, all of whom were regularly referred to as Jeff.
It’s hard to direct a warning against misbehavior when one of the three Jeffs is behaving, another is doing something completely unrelated but equally mischievous, and the subject of the warning is busy doing what he wasn’t supposed to be doing, and is ignoring the teacher.
Flash forward 30-plus years, to a small newspaper office where Miss Rhonda and I had the pleasure of working together. There was another Rhonda there, too, who was also sweet and pretty. Although it ain’t politically correct, I refer to many women as “love” and “honey” and by similar terms of endearment.
It became markedly confusing to some folks when I would say the words, “Rhonda, love?” and two women would reply “Yes, dear?” Never mind when the phone would ring and somebody else would holler, “Rhonda, Line Two.” I spun in sincere indignation one day when a new lady said aloud, “Which Rhonda?” I misheard what she said, and I was ready to jump to the defense of either my beloved wife (and coworker) or my friend (and coworker).
Although I am taking the quote out of context, I doubt Shakespeare would mind. After all, he was perfectly willing to pull his own prose (and that of others) out of its original place and plop it in a spot where it worked for his purposes.
In the tragedy Othello – and if you haven’t even heard of it, much less read or seen it, you should send a nasty letter to your English lit teacher — the hero’s former friend turned nemesis, Iago, is setting Othello up for a fall. Iago tells Othello:
“Good name in man and woman, … is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name. Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”
It’s ironic, of course, that Iago was in the process of destroying Othello’s reputation, but that’s neither here nor there.
A name is indeed important, but attaching a face, or better still a voice, to said name – aye, as the Bard might say, there’s the rub.
I have people whom I regularly have to track down through three different social media sites and text messaging on a telephone because they refuse to answer a telephone call. Not just from me — others have the same problem. I think the ultimate was one particular woman who contacted me about something which was, to her, extremely important – yet replied via different media platforms toe ach question. I’d answer one question by email, and she’d reply via text. I’d reply via text, and have to find her on a social media page. She’d then reply to my answer via yet another method, when all she ever had to do was punch a button on her phone and call me.
It’s a strange, instant-communicative, non-communicating world we live in. I am not old, merely arcane, but I well remember writing letters to people, and when a long distance telephone call represented an investment. We’ve
come a far cry from the days when a comely young woman told President Andrew Jackson, “I just came here to wait. He’ll be along directly.”
We’re even farther from when the travellers and longhunters of two centuries ago would arrive at a predetermined spot defined by “around that way, near a creek under a big tree,” and be content to wait for weeks.” Now we can’t even wait for the phone to finish ringing before we’re sending a text followed by an urgent message via Facebook and a tweet.
We’re all in such a hurry to say something that we can’t even wait for an answer — much less find waiting to find the right someone we needed to talk to in the first case.
You’re welcome to let me know if you disagree – just give me a call.
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