Phones are becoming almost unbearable in some respects.
In fact, with the exception of our smoke alarm, the sound of a ringing phone has become the most annoying sound in our relatively quiet house.
Before you tell me I’m old and should just get rid of my landline, it isn’t just the landline anymore.
Every few months, my iPhone becomes a magnet for so-called spam calls. In fact, it’s currently going on. Every few minutes, my phone rings with calls reportedly from small towns in my home state. A few are labeled “Spam Risk,” but most aren’t. I don’t answer any of them, and I block every single number, but they keep coming.
Indeed, these calls have taken away one of the real pleasures of owning a mobile phone. Until recently, if my phone rang, I knew it was someone who had gotten my number from me. The only exceptions — fairly rare — were misdialed numbers. Essentially, all mobile phone numbers were unlisted.
Sadly, that has ceased to matter. It has become so easy to use computers to make calls that they can just cycle through numbers and only put a person on the line when someone answers. Some of these may be legitimate sales calls, but many are doubtless phishing calls meant to somehow con people out of their money.
The primary target is older people, who have less tendency to believe people are trying to cheat them. Of course, that’s changing. My wife, who has two doctorates and is the smartest person I know, purchased a policy that would offer repairs and replacements for all our household appliances, thought she was paying a one-time fee. It turned out to be a monthly fee, although to be fair, the company was honest enough to let her cancel at no cost.
To be fair, I can ignore calls on my iPhone just by turning the ringer volume all the way down. If I see a call from someone I wanted to hear from, I can just return the call.
The situation is different on our land line. This is where we get calls from our doctors, and it’s also the line on which we can put the number on the government’s “Do Not Call” list. This helps a little, but it’s the exception that ruins it. Any charity we have donated to in the past is allowed to call us for more donations, and one additional problem is that charities share their lists with other charities.
And of course, they use the same computers to make calls. Some of the numbers identified by our caller ID are calling us three or four times a day. Some days I just unplug the phone, but my wife doesn’t like that.
If, God forbid, I outlive my wife and am ever alone, the land line will go and I will only use my mobile for text messages. It would not break my heart to ever hear another ringing phone.