Telephones

The cellphone craze has been with Filipinos for quite a few years now. Practically everyone you know has his or her own cellphone. The convenience of having a cellphone has inevitably become a necessity. With just a few strokes of the finger, your message can be sent across.

But do you remember that not so long ago having a phone line was practically a luxury? You would be considered lucky if you only had to wait 5 years before they install a phone line in your home. And this is not a joke.

Here's one memory of my phoneless days.

Since we didn't have a landline in our home back then, it was my practice to list my cousin's phone number in our class directory to have me contacted during urgent situations. This cousin lived in the same street where I was from.

We were in highschool back then. I'm just not sure which year level. Most probably first year coz my sked allowed me to be home early that afternoon to fix my bike (not the motorbike or pocketbike which kids play with nowadays, but the de padyak na bisikleta -- yes, BMX is the proper term).

My cousin rang our doorbell. I had a phone call from a classmate.

I immediatey washed my greasy hands. Quickly wiped them dry. And ran as fast as I could towards my cousin's house which was about 10 houses away. I didn't want my caller to be put on hold for a long time, whoever he was.

Huffing and puffing, I greeted, "Hello?"

It was Bing. I'm not sure if he was the class secretary back then. But surely he was the one we could rely on when it came to information dissemmination.

"Meron tayong PE bukas. Magdala ka ng uniform.", Bing informed.

Apparently, the PE schedule for the following day wasn't fully decided yet when we went home from school. So Bing was now informing me that yes, there would be actual PE tomorrow, and not the PE lecture. So we had to bring our shoes, shorts and shirts for PE.

"Ah ok", I quipped, still catching my breath from the running.

"O yun lang, tawagan ko pa yung ibang classmates natin to inform them.", Bing hurriedly says.

"Salamat." was all that I could reply.

We exchanged goodbyes and hung up. And I was still breathing heavily from the running.

A part of me wanted to tell Bing, "Wait! Please don't tell me I did all that running for that piece of information. C'mon, kwentuhan muna tayo." But then again, he needed to call the others. It wasn't his problem that we didn't have our own phone line yet. It wasn't his fault that I had to run a few meters just to be able to answer my phone call.

As opposed to the running I did just a while earlier, I took a leisurely walk on my way back home. Cursing PLDT under my breath.

For all its worth -- Salamat ulit Bing. I still appreciate that phone call.

And just for the record, we got our landline installed one month after I graduated from college. But until now I am still cursing PLDT for robbing me of a normal teen-age life. Some things cannot be brought back.