Possibly the perfect outgoing voicemail message

/

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal tweeted this last week:

““Hey, this is Matt’s voicemail. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you years from now when you learn to stop leaving voicemails””
— Matthew Inman

I'm so very tempted to use it as my outgoing message.

I won't even have to change the name.

People I don't understand: Motionless telephone talkers

/

I don't understand anyone who sits still while talking on the phone.

I don't speak to people on the phone often, but when I do, you can bet that while I'm talking, I'm also emptying a dishwasher, sweeping the kitchen floor, folding laundry, or doing any number of mindless chores in need of completion.  

I can't imagine why anyone would just sit there and talk. It's like they're trying to be unproductive. 

This is not a telephone, so how does my son know that this was once a telephone?

/

My wife sent me this photo of my son from a recent visit to a children’s museum.

Yes, my family gets to go to children’s museums during the week while I slave away in the mines.

When I saw the image, I couldn’t help but wonder how Charlie understood how to use this device. It’s so unlike any telephone that he has ever seen in his life. The rotary dial, the cord, the immobile base, and even the separate, oversized, oddly shaped handset are all foreign to him.

Yet there he is, holding it to his ear, pretending to make a phone call.

image

Then again, I’ve also seen my son pretend to make phone calls using bananas and shoes, so perhaps imagination has a lot to do with it.

Yet somehow bananas and shoes more closely resemble the phones that Charlie has seen than this thing. Think about it:

  • Bananas and shoes are the same shape as our cordless phone.
  • Bananas and shoes are portable, like every phone Charlie has ever seen.
  • Bananas and shoes have no cords dangling from them.
  • Bananas and shows have no finger wheels affixed to them.
  • Bananas and shoes have no numbers on their surfaces, which our iPhones don’t have, either. To Charlie, most of the phones that he’s ever seen have clear, black surfaces. He’s probably never even seen an the number pad on any iPhone. 

I have to assume one of two things:

  1. Somehow the ancient, rotary phone has insinuated itself into human genetic code.
  2. My son is a genius.