The Rotary Phone and the Clock

A conversation between two friends over coffee and cookies

 “Gladys? Why do you have an old black rotary phone?”

“Oh, I’ve always had that phone.”

“But, such phones don’t really work anymore. They can’t do a bunch of things that push button phones do, and I imagine it makes it very hard to do basic tasks like ordering prescriptions, or even ordering pizza. Push button phones cost like 20 bucks. Why don’t you just get one?”

“No. I’ve always had that one. No sense changing.”

“But don’t you see, you are limiting what you can do and forcing yourself to do things that are way more inconvenient and time consuming?

“Yeah, well.”

“What do you mean ‘yeah, well’?” There is absolutely no logical reason to have that phone. By keeping that phone you are willfully making your life less convenient. Hell! You are probably making your life less safe as well. Something incredibly basic like dialing 9-1-1. I bet it takes 4 times as long to dial 9-1-1 on your phone then on a push button phone?

“Well, there’s nothing I can do. The phone is plugged in and working. I’m stuck with it.”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?!  You could literally go to like any store in town and buy a new phone, plug it in and be done. It is about the easiest thing you could do.”

“Hmm.”

“My god you are exasperating!”

“OK, let’s talk about something else then.”

“Fine. Oh, I just thought of something: Don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour this weekend. It’s Daylight Savings Time.  Fall back and all that.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? It’s fall and Sunday is the day we set our clocks back an hour.”

“Yeah, but why?  Why should we do that?

“Because we’ve always done that.”

“But switching the time doesn’t really work anymore, it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t save energy, it doesn’t save money, it does nothing.”

“That’s just what we do. No sense changing.”

“But don’t you see, switching our clocks is an artificial construct that limits natural light and forces us to modify our schedule which is inconvenient.”

“Yeah well.”

 “What do you mean ‘yeah, well’?” There is absolutely no logical reason to switch the clocks. By keeping this ridiculous practice we are willfully making life less convenient. Hell! We are making life less safe as well. Something incredibly basic like driving with less light makes the roads less safe and causes deaths on the road!”

“Well there’s nothing we can do. We move our clocks back every fall. We are stuck with it.”

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?! We could literally just NOT touch our clocks and keep the time consistent. Doing nothing is about the easiest thing we could do!!”

“Hmm.”

“My god you are exasperating!”

“OK, let’s talk about something else then.”