One Ringy Dingy…
Just Pick Up The Damn Phone
On Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In — perhaps one of the two most subversive television programs of the 1960s and early 1970s [the other was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour] — a regular skit featured Lily Tomlin playing a telephone operator named Ernestine.
Ernestine snorted her way through prank calls to everyone from Aristotle Onassis to the CIA and General Motors — later, with Oscar the Grouch — and each one-sided dialogue always began with her intoning “One Ringy Dingy.”
It was a time when party lines were still common and people could shamelessly listen in on their neighbors’ conversations. Ernestine was fearless when it came to cold-calling anybody and everybody. Fast-forward five or six decades, and everything is different.
Today, there are millions of adults who are deathly afraid of talking on the phone, though you’d never know it from a typical ride in a Quiet Car where there’s always that one a-hole who decides that their conversation is their one true chance to shine.
One study found that 81% of U.S. based millennials hate to pick up the phone, while another cited that 49% of Gen Zs in Australia admit that talking on the phone — whether making or receiving a call — makes them extremely anxious.
Of course, the other, quite understandable side of the issue is that many of us don’t pick up a ringing phone if we don’t recognize the number, which is good protection against scams, but not always.
In my previous life as a magazine journalist and the author of books on everything from cats with jobs to seriously subversive cartoonists, it wasn’t unusual for me to spend hours on the phone every day.
Today I can go days without talking to other people — in person or by phone — and I know that when I start talking to myself — and expecting an answer — it’s a sign it’s time to shift gears. But I still pick up the phone a) when I need to get a fast answer, and b) when I’m not in the mood to sift through ten websites.
But most days, I admit that I choose the easy way out.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my rough estimate is that less than 1% of all paper records are available online; the other 99% is buried somewhere in paper form.
Whether you’re digging into your family history or researching a topic for a book or article — or both — and want an answer to a question you haven’t been able to find, be brave and pick up the phone. Reach out, as the old ads implored us.
And — I know this sounds weird — but call someone who’s likely to pick up. It’s my experience here in small-town New Hampshire that many of the custodians of local history tend to be older, retired, and mostly women. They have encyclopedic knowledge about their towns and know things that would never show up in any records, print or online. Many will talk for hours.
Ask me how I know…
Since many don’t use computers, the only way to reach them is to call them…on their landlines.
So here’s your assignment for the week:
Think of a question that you haven’t been able to answer through your normal modes of research. Find a library or museum or historical society who is likely to know the answer.
And then call them. Of course, they may not pick up, so leave a message.
And then post in the comments how it went.
The Takeaway: Yes, talking on the phone can be a big, scary thing for some people, but the truth is that in many cases it’s the only way to get a direct, fast answer to a question that you haven’t been able to answer via your normal means of research. More importantly, it can expand your research in ways you can’t possibly imagine.