Silence

may not be golden, not even considering that old song. But it certainly can be welcome.

As a child of the 50s, starting university in the 60s, med school in the early 70s, I was never one for background anything. I wasn’t much for TV, radio programs, or music in the background. I normally avoided turning on the radio in the car. I am explaining this to provide a contrast to the present day.

The first “cell phone”, aka Handi that came into my possession was in 1995 while I was stationed in Germany. Ostensibly it was so that the senior commander could find us hospital commanders anytime he wanted. In fact, I figured out relatively quickly that it make more sense to send that heavy, Motorola brick with the long distance ambulance crews. If they had a problem on the road, they could call. This would keep things “in house” rather than having to go through the German road support services and running up charges on my budget. Although that  was an eminently responsible decision, it didn’t make the powers-that-be happy. Instead I was handed a second brick and told that I couldn’t fob it off on anyone, to include the duty officer.

For a reference, Internet at this point was still dial-up at a whopping 1200 baud, the majority of discussion groups were on various University .Alt boards and the KnitList was a great place to find people, discussion techniques, and get help on difficult patterns.

Then there were flip phones, mostly on a pay-as-you-go basis. By this time, anyone who can read this has already had a mobile type phone for a decade or more. Probably close to two, now that I think about it. And that phone, for most is like an appendage.

It was interesting to be without it, even for a day.