Tagged: Little Known Fact

Little known fact about me: I HATE talking on the phone. I mean I avoid it pretty much at all costs.

When I was a teenager, I was typical. I talked on the phone for hours and hours at a time. I even remember watching complete movies while on the other end with people. We would just put the phone down when the movie came on then talk during commercials. WHO does that? So weird! Anyway, it was around the advent of email when I started to dislike the phone. Then once I started IM-ing back in 1997, I REALLY started to hate the phone. Now that I have Facebook, Twitter and an iPhone, I see no point in ever talking on the phone again.

The reason I don’t like it is mainly this: people talk too much!! I have nothing against talking with people in person. Or talking to someone I haven’t talked to in a really long time (a good friend perhaps). But normal day to day dribble with people I see or talk to on a regular basis makes me queasy. I prefer email because it’s to the point. No one is going to drone on and on about the weather or what they had for lunch or what book they are reading for an hour in an email. They are going to type what they want and be done with it. And even if they do type TMI, you can choose to quickly scan over it. Thereby saving time and brain capacity!

When you’re on the phone with someone, you are virtually trapped. You are forced to listen to topics you could care less about, and pretend you’re interested. This is why I do not answer my phone at home. Like ever. Unless I am expecting some kind of urgent call, my phone goes to the recorder every time. I feel the same way about answering it at work. I don’t normally answer it if I don’t recognize the caller ID#, and rarely answer it even if I know who it is, unless I know it’s important. It never fails that people leave a message or send an email anyway. If you send me an email I will respond usually within 1 hour because I am always on email (unless I am asleep). Yes I do have an iPhone but you wanna know how much I use the phone aspect? I only have logged 9 hours and 13 minutes of actual call time in the life of it. I do not use my iPhone for the phone. I use it for music, internet and texting.

You might think that I am totally anti-social because of this, and you would be right. No, I’m just kidding…kind of. I like socializing with a very small set of people, but otherwise I am really only “there” in body, not mind. But those people who I do socialize with know that they are very special to me because of this.

So yeah, I hate the phone and prefer email, Twitter, Facebook and IM. Sue me!

-VV