The electric company switched out my meter this week. Gone is the good old familiar meter with dials and needles rotating merrily around, and in its place is an updated digital model. “You had an old model with only six digits,” the installer told me, “and now you have one that reads up to nine digits.”
If I didn’t need nine digits one day, and then needed them the next day, should I wonder about that?
It only took about three minutes to change the system, but it can seem like an uncomfortable time when you have no power while it’s going on. I had to tell my boss I’d be offline, and the entire house went silent for those three minutes, which is unusual except when I’m in bed sleeping and unaware if I snore.
When modern replacements take the fun out of everyday life, I wonder why we have to improve things by making them so neutral and cold. Occasionally I think we all stopped to marvel at the meter dials and analog numbers with fascination. From now on, it probably won’t even draw my eye, with its digital numerals made up of brackish logs ending on a bias cut.
Another dial in my house went on the fritz; it’s an old landline phone with a numeric dial, so it’s of little consequence, but I was reminded of its absence when I recently saw a video involving two modern teens who were tasked with attempting to use such a device to place a phone call. Just to show how dials are becoming extinct, the fellows had no clue how to use a rotary phone. To start, they have never dealt with picking up the receiver to achieve a dial tone. Then they didn’t understand what the finger stop was for and simply wiggled the holes some distance around and gawked at the inefficiency of it all.
So our modern times seem to have reduced the word “dial” to a name for soap.
When I had to undergo a procedure, the doctor gave me prep instructions which demanded I use Dial soap to wash prior to surgery. It’s supposed to be a deodorant soap, but it has a scent itself which I didn’t find pleasant. Nothing throws one’s game off more than a scent which lingers unwanted on your person for hours. I spent my recovery under the curse of Dial.
Would those teenagers offered any sympathy?
Eventually I will replace the old phone or, perhaps, get rid of it forever. My dials are dialing out.
Does this mean my life is becoming so modernized, I can phone it in? With a cell phone?
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 