I've had the same answering machine since 1987. The original cassette tapes were still in it, rewinding and playing for over 20 years, message on top of message, erased and forgotten. The machine finally played it's last message, refusing to rewind, little red lights stopped blinking, but I barely noticed, I have a cell phone now, no one calls on the land line anymore unless they want to sell me tickets to the Policeman's Ball or it might be a pre-recorded Al Gore enlisting my help with the environment.
I removed the cassette from my original machine, turned it over and popped into the tape player on my stereo (inherited from Grandpa Black, also circa 1987?) Soon my whole apartment was filled with a familiar voice. He was the love of my life in 1991. It was a fragment and barely a whisper. "... so call me back, like you promised. Don't worry about the time." And then another friend wishing me luck on the BAR exam, and then my mom speaking as if into a microphone, making an announcement "I just wanted to see how the BAR exam went", a bit of silence as if waiting for a reply, the sound of a phone (remember the solid phones we had?) being hung up, the beep... another fragment, my sister in law talking about the kids (who are all grown now) and then him again "... I know how you don't want to call me here and I understand... I just... I love you.. (silence, a sigh) that's all I have to say, I love you... the end." He hangs up.
Strangely enough further on the tape is a conversation with me and a friend that somehow got recorded. I sound young, but bored, I want to shake myself and yell "Wake up!" I won't ever be that young again and no one will ever call again just to say he loves me. I lost him and I lost myself somewhere along the way. But twenty years from now, I will probably feel the same way, and I will think I never had it so good.
2 comments:
Like long lost phone messages on an answering machine, I keep wondering if we send e-mails to people we know in our address book, people long gone (or forgotten or not quite but gone one way or another) if some ghostly message will be sent back in return. How weird is that, but maybe it's not strange at all, only that we're not used to getting words from another dimension and perhaps that'll be the future in communication.
Before e-mail and cell phones, the little red light on an answering machine (or lack of it) could make or break your day.
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