“I go through my day remembering things like telephone cords.” — Bruce Eric Kaplan

I’m having connectivity issues with my iPhone. Once we were inseparable; now I can never find it. It’s always missing. She never misplaces hers; she knows exactly where it is at all times, lost in the dark recesses of her enormous bags. At last check, she had 75 missed calls.

Mine, on the other hand, is cherished and petted. That is, when I know where the damn thing is.

It’s like this: From time to time I have to set it down.

Let’s say I have to go to the bathroom. I’m a couple of years past 60, so when the urge calls, I have to respond immediately. You can’t fool with that urge. It’s like pulling the rip cord on a parachute. It’s now or fall.

So I put it down on a table. I can’t take it with me, because I have a history of dropping phones into the toilet. OK, so I only did it once with a Note 2, but I was never allowed to live it down. So I put it down, and then I forget where it is. The next step involves her finding hers in the bottom of her bag, and calling mine, so I can retrieve it, which involves running up and down stairs and out to the car in the garage, with one hand on her ringing phone and the other cupped to my ear, hoping for a reply from mine. I gotta tell you, I’m way too old for hide-and-seek games.

Don’t we all long for simpler times when the phone was always black and sat on a tiny table, like a cat waiting to be petted? It was usually in the living room, and until we were in our teens, it almost never rang. It was a constant in our lives. Nobody ever had to ask, “Where’s the phone?”

Then one day there were suddenly two phones. There was the living room phone with white dial and a short cord that you couldn’t take any farther than 5 feet, so the phone company talked you into a pastel one for the wall in the kitchen.

That beauty had a delightfully long curly cord that reached from the wall to the kitchen table or to the stove, where you could chat while frying eggs, to the fridge, where you could stand with the door open, sip a beer and chat. We thought that long cord spelled freedom.

The beauty of both was that you always knew where they were when they rang, and the ring was loud enough to hear upstairs in the bathroom, but running up and down became annoying and dangerous, so the phone company sold you one for the bedroom with a Disney name like Princess.

Now there were more phones in the house than food, complete with dialogue for all: “Hello?” “Who is it?” “Who’s it for?” “Is that for me?” “Tell him I’m not here.”

“Sorry, I don’t want any.” “Hold on.”

Some came in a whisper. “Your father is dead.” Or big happy shouts. “We’re getting married” or “It’s a girl.”

Then one day the economy began shifting under our feet. Everyone had a job and there was nobody home to answer the multiple phones. From the kitchen to the living room to the bedrooms, they rang and rang, echoing throughout the empty house. They rang so long the dog ran to the basement, where there were no phones, and hid.

Then, wouldn’t you know, the phone company talked you into getting an answering machine, and you got to make funny messages in a funny voice for your friends. It was always there in the darkness, taking your calls.

Now that world with its gum machines, black-and-white televisions, faraway wars and poodle skirts is gone, and good riddance. But some of the icons of my youth I miss, especially those that hung on walls in diners,with pencil scribblings that read, “Call Debbie for a good time.”

Some perched in big glass boxes on every street corner from Laredo to Lewiston, with torn phone books hanging on chains.

Inside each one, initials and numbers, now long forgotten, were scribbled on the dirty glass walls in lipstick. They’re all gone now, the boxes and the long cords that meant freedom.

This morning my youngest suggested I get a landline with a loud ring just for her calls. Actually, that’s a good idea. I can use it to locate my iPhone when it’s lost.

You know what? I never called Debbie.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. His book, “Will Write for Food,” is a collection of some of his best Morning Sentinel columns.

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