Remember this conversation?
Hello
Hello!WhereAreYou?IAmAlreadyHere
Hello?
Hello!!CanYouHearMe?
Now I can. Where are you?
IAmAlreadyHere!WhereAreYou?
Home.
WhyDidn’tYouStartYet?AndIDon’tHaveCoinsComeQuickly!
Whose number is this?
I-AM-Beep-CALLING-Beep-YOU-Beep-From-Beep-OUTSIDE-Beep-I-DON’T-Beep-HAVE-Beep-COINS-Beep-Five-Beep-SECONDS-Beep-LEFT-Beep-COME-Beep-FAS..
Coin boxes!
Remember those little yellow boxy things that were hung at every paan shop which was sort of the sixty-second telegram of the phone family? The only handy phone long before we added i’s to the phones? Long ago when we travelled in rusty busses and didn’t bother wearing dad’s old sandals when we went out? Remember? Remember!?
And the fact that I used boxy things to describe them makes me feel like there’s a vocabulary-sized hole in my head. Otherwise, how could all those GRE words have drained out?
Why is pizza called calories now?
How come the coins and bills replaced words and laughter?
Why do a few of my friends have little things with them called babies?
How the *profanity* (fuck, I meant) did the alarm not go off to really wake me up to 25?
Hold on, life! That’s a lot of change!
Or perhaps not. Perhaps it’s just like the coin box days, only, things somehow seem to have juggled places. Perhaps we are just living a sixty-second lives in our very own boxes, keeping ourselves busy minting coins? Just curious.
maybeandmaybenot 