Back in the day — you know, the day — you could say (as I used to) “I work for the phone company” and no one would doubt which phone company paid your salary. That’s why Lily Tomlin’s old “Ernestine the telephone operator” could say, without ambiguity, “We’re the phone company. We don’t have to care.”
Aside: Okay, listen, this isn’t the point of this post but now that I’ve got Ernestine on the brain I just had to look her up on YouTube. She’s there, all right. Here’s a sample:
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging…
Anyway, aside from the fact that there are now as many phone companies in the USA as there are neighborhoods, the technology itself has of course made huge leaps. Cell phones, obviously. Cordless phones. Caller ID. Phones that take pictures. In fact, phones do so much anymore that it’s easy to forget some of the things they no longer do.
For instance: when your power goes out, so do your phones.
