communication

Shut up or communicate, please

My father taught me focused driving on the streets of Chicago with a single statement that still sticks fifty years later. “Always drive as if the OTHER GUY IS DRUNK!” That was decades before I’d heard the term defensive driving course. I’ve amended that statement since the ubiquitous use of cellphones and texting while driving.  “Always drive as if the other person is DRUNK, DEAF, AND BLIND! No talking was allowed while we were in traffic.  Totally pay attention, shut up and drive.

Fifty years later, robo-phone zombies attempt to cross streets, push shopping carts, park cars, eat in restaurants, travel, and download and play games designed for jogging or walking and cheat death by driving. I think cell phones actually make more sense as  wristwatches.  Two things could be done at once while talking.  Think of a hurried upper management office filler, stuffing their face with a hot Cinnabon and talking simultaneously with a full mouth. You could plan that week long visit with your mother-in-law while running short on time and drying your hair on the high setting.

Certain people tend to talk with their hands.  If the phone could also transmit video the person receiving the call could choose to cut it short, or remember to take daily Dramamine. I think it would be convenient for dog owners. The loved one on the other end could share in the joy of Spuds repeated barking while waiting for the shush of the successful Frisbee fling in a November gale.

Go ahead, scratch your face, itch your scalp, pick your nose, boil water, wave to the neighbors and keep on talking. Billions upon billions of words – invisible symbols of language hanging in cyberspace waiting for an electronic signal to coalesce into communication, or numbing mindless chatter.

No video yet but getting closer.

http://youtu.be/-cMcvpuYbpI

Why am I so off center from a nature blog and into a rant? We’re in the middle of having our house re-roofed. I mean a total rebuild of our four-seasons room and a portion of the house roof. The damaged structure has already been removed and is open to the sky. Going on four weeks, four voice-mails, and nine emails over schedule. Finally, one subcontractor showed up a week ago. I could tell something was wrong. The two guys that were working the roof were jumpy, they didn’t want the whip around. This week we got some rain and 4-1/2 hours work our of the two regular guys, plus a visit from the whip who talked to our insurance adjuster, and then disappeared again.

During the entire process I’ve been stressing communication, communication, communication. Just call me and let me know what is going on, are the contractors coming out, not coming out, what’s the hold up, where are we going?

These are not the only people I’ve scheduled with this week that were supposed to follow up and failed. All this advanced technology, instant communication, wasted time,  while society remains firmly attached to cell phones, but accomplishes nothing. Is the cell phone the new excuse for malingering, hiding, or wasting employers time and money?

What about a lack of social skills? People are actually walking around pretending to talk into silent phones simply because they don’t want to appear out of place or unwanted. Come on, how many people does it really take to manage our modern lives on a daily basis. How many humans are being micro-managed to death via constant contact through smart phones.

Personally, I preferred the old way.  I  called a company and a live person answered the call. Someone cared about the company image, product, or my concern. If this really is progress. I really want a watch phone able to record and transmit video.  I want someone to finally answer their smart phone with video capability when I call. I want them to see which part of my anatomy is giving a shit because they can’t shut up or communicate, PLEASE!

Sorry, You’ve Been Disconnected


What’s in my name the Daily Challenge wants to know. That’s a difficult question because my family disconnected from the rest of our relatives since I was eleven. That was the year both my grandfathers died and the war between my mother, and her perceived right is might started and never ended.

I can answer two-thirds of that question because my parents told me the story of how I got my first and middle name. The first name chosen for me was Cassandra. My father picked it. I’ve no idea where it came from or why he adored it. I would have ended up a Cass, Cassie, Sandy or since I’d been bullied well into adulthood, the Ass. However, my mother in her wisdom, didn’t think it was a proper name to yell out the second story window when calling me home and decided on Charlene after my father Charles. I hate Charlene, and been various spellings of Charlie, Charlee, Charley, and finally Charly since grade school. Dad was Chuck.

Carol is my middle name. My Godmother, Aunt Puny, the smallest, the normal-sized, and youngest of the tall females in my mother’s family was actually named Carolyn. She named me after her, as did Aunt Puny’s daughter, and their brother, Boy, my uncle Art’s daughter. We ended up with three cousin Carols in my mother family.

My dad’s father emigrated from the Transylvania region on Hungary in 1907 with a wife name Rose and settled in the Pittsburgh area. His mother, Amalia Orban, forever after known as Amelia, came from the same region around 1911 to serve as a cook to a wealthy Cleveland family. Somewhere along the way, Rose disappeared, and in 1915 Paul Makray married Amelia Orban in Chicago, Illinois.

The only story I heard growing up was my grandparents met as children in an orphanage. But my grandmother’s entire family, sans father, was intact, and had settled one trip at a time, in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Only her oldest brother shortly visited to bring great mother over and returned to run a farm in Kosice. I’ve found birth records of all the children except the son that went back to the old country.

I was 34 years old before my father told me grandpa had a brother living in Pittsburgh, PA. I had more cousins? Immediately I called information, tracked on down, and got on the telephone (this was pre-computer days). We talked for a couple of hours, learned his grandfather had never mentioned anything about a brother either. Why? I don’t understand this.

Grandpa’s nephew kept in touch with our family. We connected with theirs. My grandmother was very family oriented. I have Lawrence Ones letters and notes from my grandfathers funeral. But there are no photographs left in our family. Perhaps my dad’s brother had them, but he was as secretive as the rest of the male clan. Eventually, through Ancestory.com I did meet a step-child, a great-granddaughter of my grandfather’s brother who is also trying to put her family together. She is having the same problem I’m getting. The Pennsylvania families don’t talk to each other either.

Sadly, the contact I had, the wonderful link between our two families, died in a car accident a few years ago. His parents are gone, as are his grandparents. His name was the fourth generation to carry the name of that young man who first set foot in American with his mother a few month after my grandfather. His father arrived a couple of years earlier to establish a foundation for the family, and when my grandfather arrived he went to his brother’s address.

My grandfather was fairly well-educated, always wore a suit and tie to work each day, owned his own business, and held patents for several items within ten years of arriving in America. It never made him a millionaire, but he produced one additional son, that did live the American dream.

After four generations we still don’t keep in touch even though at some time during the year we’re all within a couple of hours of each other. Is it a genetic trait? Only three of us related through my grandmother, have managed to put together a small family and are trying to gather some old memories and facts. One is also my cousin on my dad’s side so all the information I gather will pass to her. Her children will at least have some idea of what this branch of their family tree links back to.

Personally, I hate being disconnected. I would have loved to have had memories to share into my doddering years with wrinkled cousins and their smooth-faced offspring. Even if we tried to blend now, what would we talk about? Like original sin, original disconnection has caused a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon. Our lives have moved on like the water over the American and Canadian sides of Niagara Falls. Reconnection would be about genealogy and perhaps genetics. I wonder if there’s any time left for friendship and mending fractured bridges.

Submitted to: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/daily-prompt-identity/