REFLECTIONS ON FAITH AND
LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER
I don’t like to talk on
the telephone. I think it’s genetic. My brother is the same way. We communicate
through our wives. They don’t mind talking on the phone. In fact, they seem to
enjoy it.
It’s not exactly the
talking that bothers me. I do fine if someone calls me, especially a
grandchild. It’s the dialing, or punching, or saying the #, or thinking it, that
gives me trouble.
I assume that just
thinking the number is the next step in wireless technology. In fact, that
“thinking” stuff to get it to happen is already here, especially for paralyzed
folks. They look at a glass of water, concentrate, say without words, “I want a
drink,” and the robot arm brings the glass and its straw to their lips. That is
a marvelous thing for them to be able to do.
I’ve done some “thinking”
action stuff along the way. When I was a long-distance runner, someone told me
that when you get a side stitch, concentrate on it real hard and try to make it
as bad as pain as possible and it will go away. Counterintuitive, but it worked
every time.
I went for quite a while
to Bjorg Holte, a deep-muscle therapist, the Pfrimmer kind, for stuck
shoulders, always the problem part of my body [2nd to the brain].
[1] That woman could get her fingers so deep into me that I thought she was
coming out the other side! She taught me to move my blood around so that it
would heat a body part so it would be more pliable to work on. I got pretty
good at it. One day she jumped up and dashed to the sink and ran cold water on
her fingers. “You burned me,” she said. I was sorry for Bjorg’s fingers, but I
was also rather proud of myself. I had no idea that I had super powers.
However, as I was saying,
when I so rudely interrupted myself, my telephone problem is initiating the
call. There are a lot of obvious reasons why that might be, but I avoid
thinking about the obvious. The problem with being a writer is that you want a
reason that is esoteric and different.
My father did not talk on
the phone, except in February, when we lived 750 miles north of him. Then he
enjoyed calling Helen and telling her about how he had crocuses and daffodils
coming up. Then he would laugh and laugh. Helen was always his favorite child,
at least from the time I married her, and she was the one who did the most to
care for him, by far, but he, too, did not initiate the call. He would wait
until Helen called to see how he and Mother were doing, then tease her in his
Hoosier farmer way.
So I’m a fan of new
technology, if email and texting can be considered new. They keep me from
having to “dial” the phone.
I’m also a fan of old technology, like letters.
I have two long-time close friends who have trouble talking on the phone
because their brains have been subjected to strokes and now they can’t find
words. Neither of them even knows what a computer is. So each week I write to
them, say the things I would say if we talked on the phone, except with much
better sentence structure and grammar. Whatever words I find, they can read
those very well.
So what’s the point of
this reflection? I’m not sure. I just like to tell stories. I’m not sure there
needs to be a point, but I’m willing to let you find it if there is one. But I
will say this: in a world where everybody is in touch with everybody else all
the time, it’s good just to step aside once in a while, out of the flow of
words.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
1] Bjorg came to the US
from Norway when she was 20. She was a sculptor, a very good one. But, she
said, “I realized I spent all my time by myself, in my studio. I needed
something to keep me in touch with people. So I decided to become a sculptor of
bodies. I was already a student of anatomy, for the sculpting, so the two go
together quite well.”
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