Little House on the Prairie…

Some younger bloggers might find it hard to believe, but I grew up in a house without a phone and it worked just fine. We had to run to the neighbor’s house, if there was an emergency, but that wasn’t too often. Life without a phone was normal for many and as for texting, that word was non existing. 

The phone came later, when I was a teenager and my school was further away. That changed my Grandmothers opinion about this modern stuff. One day I came home and there it was, on a small table in the kitchen, our own phone. It took a while to get used to it. It didn’t ring too often and our daily life wasn’t interrupted by phone calls. It was always a little bit exciting when it rung. “Who was calling for who, and what was the occasion?”, because people did not just call for no reason, there was always something important going on.

There was a lot of loud taking and yelling going on these days. The reception wasn’t always the best, lots of static in the lines and somehow we thought we had to talk louder, when the caller lived in a different town.

Talking on the phone felt odd and it took some time to get used to it. How weird to talk to someone without seeing them? No facial impression…just the voice. Yes, times were different then and I start to sound like one of the characters in “Little House on the Prarie”.

The phone was used to exchange informations. Calls were expensive, so we tried to keep them short. Phones then, were not in control of our everyday life and that was a good thing.

I have a cell phone and I text, but only short and important informations. Something like “stuck in traffic..be home soon”. 

The keyword in today’s daily prompt is communicate.

Call my old-fashioned, but I simply refuse to downgrade my communicating skills to a texting level. I love voices, I want to hear the laughter in someones voice, I want to hear the surprise and all the other emotions, that make a conversation special, when I can’t meet the person in real.  An LOL does not replace the giggle in someones voice.

So, to finally answer todays daily prompt. No, I DO NOT communicate differently…because I hardly text at all and I am loving it.

It’s a Text, Text, Text, Text World

How do you communicate differently online than in person, if at all? How do you communicate emotion and intent in a purely written medium?