The phone and I have always had a complicated relationship. There was a time when I liked it: my fondest memories are of the white Princess phone. (For those of you too young to know what that was, here is a picture.)
This was the chic object you were supposed to cradle lovingly in your hand as you lolled on your low slung striped sofa (I had one of those) with your feet kicked in the air behind you a la Gidget and gossip with your friends. I happily complied. It was the most private, let's just say, erotic object I had ever had my hand on, and on it I had the first tentative, breathy phone calls with boys with whom I could never have been so open with in person.
Its quality as sexual surrogate has somewhat dissipated now that there are cell phones which people use on the subway and email which favors time-release and allows you to be cool or warm and possibly too honest.
But the phone is still an intimate instrument. Voice is inflected; you can hear the pauses, the struggle for words, the self-conscious laugh, the desire to connect, or disconnect, as the case may be.
All this came rushing back at me as I spent more time than I have in years on the phone, dialing for Barack to Nevada this past weekend. I was surprised at how many people were willing to talk with me about this election since I usually am furious when people have my number. But over fifty percent of them gave me more than a few sentences. And many of them say they are still on the fence and won't decide until they walk into that booth.
One man told me he was on a ladder and I panicked thinking that no vote was worth making this guy fall off from a great height as he attempted to politely multi-task with me. But most who ducked were either about to go to the market, or just annoyed about hearing about the election yet one more time. (In California and NY we are not swing and have no concept of the onslaught that voters residing in states still considered in play are experiencing)
I was tempted at one point after a couple of hang ups to use Slydial, that wonderful new free phone service that allows you to jump directly to someone's voice mail, thus avoiding actual contact --so all the freedom of email plus the charm of voice. It's horrible being rejected even if the person doesn't know who you are.
But the elderly and the young, especially, were open to talking about themselves and how their families were voting, and I felt I made more progress than I had in person going door-to-door on the ground for Kerry just four years ago. The Obama campaign is so organized on the internet, phone dialing is a snap, and I made the commitment to spend an hour every day from now until the election reaching out to touch someone, even if it were a 84 year old, dare I say it, ex-plumber from Reno.
It is a lot easier than you think it is, and I urge everyone to sign up and dispel the nightmare of waking up the day after election day only to find out (gulp) that the polls were wrong.
Ads for phone sex still populate late night television, so there must be some people who still rely on the phone for a turn on.
But I don't think there could be anything more satisfying than using the phone to turn out a vote for Obama.