For the past many weeks I have been playing phone tag with one of my best friends. She’ll call me, I’ll miss her call and then call her back only to get an empty dial tone. This went on for about 2 months until we finally got ahold of each other. It was a sweet reuniting with lots of love shared and many a laugh. This got me thinking a lot about the miracle of the phone and what this invention has done to us as a species and where it is heading these days. Remember the first time you talked to your crush on the phone and you stayed up all night talking? Or the first time you and your best friend went to a party and then spent hours rehashing every detail of the night? In the 90s and early 2000s the phone was our go-to, our source of entertainment, our center of information, a day would not pass in which we did not get on our phones and connect to one of our nearest and dearest.

Lately it seems like phones are on their way out. Not as a contraption— phones have never been more in— but as a telecommunication service. It is rare when we lift our device and dial someone we care about. These days, we’re more inclined to choose the text or even snapchat as our communication medium of sorts. But what do we miss out on when we do away with the phone?

I remember when I was younger I had all my best friends’ numbers memorized and I would call them one by one when I got out of school. There was no particular plan for the conversation and no particular intention behind the phone call, it was just calling for fun. My best friend’s mother removed the “0” from her house because she would call another friend of ours (whose number started with “0”) incessantly. I don’t even remember what we used to talk about, but I remember talking as being our entertainment of choice. What we were going to wear, what we felt, whom we admired, no topic was off limits. My best friend and I had this game where we would tell each other stories before going to bed that featured us as the main characters and posited different futures for us. My favourite was us in university deciding to blow classes off and going with our boyfriends to Alex for a fish meal.

Imagine the world without phones. How would we speak to each other, how would we recap, how would we connect? Because connection is what it’s really about on the phone. It’s about moving past that filter and getting to the nitty gritty of things. If you have had a phone call recently, you’ll notice that all phone calls will start from the pleasant to the real. If you’re lucky, they’ll go straight to the real. There is an intimacy to phone conversations that you can’t replicate via text or even in person. The fact that you cannot see each other but can hear each other’s voices adds an extra level of closeness to the whole transaction. What starts off as polite banter irrevocably turns into heart-space sharing.

One of my favourite memories was the first time I talked to my ex-boyfriend on the phone. I was sick and had just had a surgery and he was calling to wish me well. We didn’t know each other very well, but we shared a best friend, and it was she who had encouraged him to talk to me. We talked for at least half an hour, recounting stories about ourselves and explaining our hopes and desires. It was a really deep talk for people who barely knew each other and led to the beginning of a relationship between us. One phone call gave us all the information we needed about each other to spike a romance.

I don’t know what your phone stories are, but I guarantee that you’ve had at least one phone call that’s changed your life. Finding out your father died. Getting a promotion at work. Finding out your wife is in labour. The phone has been a bringer of good and bad news for ages. Do you think our kids will know the miracle of the phone call?

These days the phone has evolved to feature video calls, which is fantastic and life changing, but I will always have a soft spot for the traditional receiver. I love the dedication it used to take us to go through with a phone call. The not moving because the wire wasn’t long enough, the switching to code because our parents had just walked into the room, the trippy dialing by moving the dial around instead of clicking on buttons. Even today with wireless headsets and cellular capacity, the head-to-receiver phone call still holds a special place in my heart. I love imagining what the other person is doing on the other end of the phone call. If they’re clipping their toenails, if they’re configuring their breakfast, if they’re secretly peeing. Phone calls are more than just a connection service, they’re also a gateway to imagination.

Last time I talked to one of my best friends on the phone was fairly recently. We had been missing each other on text and so I decided to just give her a call and give it a shot and she picked up. We usually speak on video because she lives in the States and I live in Egypt, but this time I just dialed her number like I would have in the 00s. Immediately we surpassed all the bullshit and pleasantries and went right down to how we were feeling. We had both been going through a hard time so there was a lot to recount and for some reason it felt much easier via phone. A fan of video calling, I suddenly became aware that the voice call offered an extra layer of veiledness. It’s a mix of privacy and forthrightness. It’s like we could be anyone, anywhere.

Next time you lift your phone to text someone ask yourself: could this be relayed in a voice call?

Is there a better way to connect?

What would my grandmother do?

Gotta go cuz my phone is beeping.

Connectedly yours,

Girl With One Earring