I’ve been in the same office, with the same desk and the same bookshelves, since I joined Pasadena City College full-time in 1994. Fourteen years ago next month, when I moved into room C313, I inherited the cheap plastic Ericsson phone that my predecessor had used; it dated from the mid-1980s. It had two lines easily reached by pressing a button. Another button to retrieve voicemail. And one to put a caller on hold, but that broke around the same time we started bombing Afghanistan.
Much has happened in my life since I came to PCC full-time, in the same summer that OJ went for his famous drive in a white Bronco. My first ex-wife and I talked on that phone. I planned three weddings (to wives two, three, and four) at least in part on that phone. And over the years, I’ve had four or five different office computers and a few different printers. I’ve had three different office chairs. I’ve shared my two-person office with five different colleagues since 1994. And though I’ve done some extraordinary things in that office, had some extraordinary conversations, finished a dissertation and written nearly a third of all my blog posts in room C313, I’ve always had the same phone.
This morning, I came to work and saw a brand new Nortel device (Nortel has been redoing the campus network this summer) on my desk. Lots of features that I don’t understand. It took me five minutes to find a dial tone. I have no idea how to access my voice mail. No handbook was left, so I’m planning on keeping the damn thing around for decoration until I work up the energy to ask someone to show me how to use it.
In the meantime, don’t call me on my office line. And I miss my filthy and battered Ericsson phone, through which I uttered so much that was interesting and inane for so long.
You know we’re all dying to know exactly what the “extraordinary things” are you have done in that office. O well, I’ll just imagine.
I’ve seen that old phone. Remember, I was in your office once and you took a call and the cord popped out of the handset, and you had to go digging around on the floor to find it? That was very funny, and I teased you that you needed a new phone. I’m sure someone can show you how to use the new phone. Ho w tough can it be?
It took me five minutes to find a dial tone.
Maybe you and McCain have more in common than I thought. Heh.
You could probably find a copy of the phone’s instruction booklet on the Google.