If I want to speak with my chickens, I’ll do it in person

There are some phone conversations I just want to avoid. I’m generally a convivial person. I enjoy the company of others and live for the free exchange of ideas. But let’s be real, some people are just … boring.

Even people who generally aren’t boring can seem that way on the telephone. I think it’s one of the reasons texting has become so popular; you’re forced to sum things up in a few sentences. There’s not all the messing about with “So, how have you been?” and “Are Sally and the kids doing well?” and “Did you hear there are missiles headed for Hawaii?”

With texting, you’re in and out of the conversation in a hurry and can get on with the important stuff, like marathon Facebook sessions and watching paint peel from the wall behind the radiator.

My daughter, Aubreii, feels the same way. We text each other almost daily, but a phone call between us requires more planning than goes into most Royal weddings.

There are the obligatory “Are you free to talk later today?” texts. Once a time is set, a second text is required just prior to dialing the phone (not that anyone “dials” anymore, but you know what I mean). That’s the “Is now OK?” text.

Finally, we’re talking, live, on the phone. It’s gotten so it feels like a big deal; like back in the days of long-distance charges and “formal” first of the month calls to Grandma’s house in Indianapolis, circa 1965. Each kid was allowed 20 seconds – which my father timed with a stopwatch – with Grandma.

I’m sure my grandmother considered the time limit a blessing. What adult really wants to talk with five dopey kids?

But like I said, most phone calls – even those not initiated by children – are boring. Which is why I’m nervous about the Petcube. The Petcube is a device that (and I swear I’m not making this up) allows your pet to call you. You read that right: Fido can now dial you up from home, just to say “woof.”

Now, I’m a true animal lover. At present I have no dog, but I do have eight cats, seven chickens and a hermit crab. I like them all, but I do not want to be fielding calls from them when I’m away from home.

Frankly, I just don’t care how their day is going. As long as they’re fed, watered and not dead, I don’t need regular feline/poultry/crustacean updates from the home front.

Why? Well, first off, most animals are even more boring than their human counterparts. My cats do nothing but sleep, eat and eviscerate small animals. What are they going to say on the phone that can’t wait until I get home and find the decapitated mole on the back porch?

And the chickens, by comparison, make the cats look like the love children of Garrison Keeler and Mark Twain. A chicken’s whole purpose in life, far as I’ve been able to ascertain, is to eat, leave messes on the lawn furniture, and (fortunately for them) create eggs. They are neither bright nor interesting animals and I feel no need to check up on them when I’m out to dinner – or to have them check up on me.

Far as the hermit crab is concerned, I’m not even sure she’s still alive. She hasn’t moved in three weeks. Fortunately, death alters a hermit crab’s demeanor only slightly; a dead one is as good a pet as a live one. But again, no phone call needed.

The Petcube provides not only voice interaction, but video as well. Basically, your pooch stands in front of the device and it sends a message to your smart watch or phone. At this point you push a button and – shazam! – you’re enjoying long-distance facetime with Lassie.

Think your pet wouldn’t be interested in speaking with you? Think again. The Petcube lets you remotely dispense food for your dog or play laser tag with your cat. I have no doubt my cats would be “calling” me 10 to 15 times an hour, just for the pleasure of chasing the Red Dot.

But here’s the worst of it: Petcube also allows for the automatic posting and live-streaming of your human/critter interactions on social media. How long will it be before we’re all drowning in “Who’s a good boy? Who is? You are” Facebook videos? It’s all too horrible to contemplate.

I have no idea what a Petcube will set you back, but I’m hoping they’re prohibitively expensive. I have an old iPhone around here somewhere. I think I’ll just switch it on and leave it in the living room. If the cats or chickens can figure out how to use it, then I’ll know they really have something important to discuss.

If not? Let ‘em communicate by leaving dead animals on the back porch, the way nature intended.

MTaylor325@gmail.com

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There has always been a 'Facebook'

I read another article yesterday about how the world is going to h-e-double-toothpicks because of Facebook. Facebook, the writer implied, is slowly sapping today's youth of the ability to think critically, maintain a modicum of decorum, and tell the difference between good writing and terrible.

It's doing the same thing to old people, but at a slower pace and we're a lost cause anyway; best to focus on the youth. They're the ones who must finish the job we started, that of mucking up the planet and getting aged Hollywood actors elected to high governmental office.

At any rate, aside from all that other stuff, the writer's main concern was privacy, or rather the lack of it. Facebook, he said, is filled with posts containing information most people should probably keep to themselves; everything from personal banking information to the addresses of teenage daughters.

He also complained briefly about the sort of people who leave posts like, "Just had roast beef for supper! Yum, yum!" but we all complain about that. Well, everybody but the roast beef posters. You know who you are.

The point is (I'm sure there was one here somewhere) every article I read comes at the issue as if this is a new phenomenon, something intrinsically tied to the 21st Century, high-speed wifi and computerized data collection techniques. It's not. The problem is as old as communication itself.

From the moment a caveman first slapped two rocks together to warn his buddy on the other side of the valley about the presence of a nearby sabertooth tiger, somebody has been listening in.

When I was a kid, just shortly after the above-mentioned Paleolithic epoch, the most modern device in any American home, aside from the television, was the telephone. It was big, black, rotary-dialed, built like a tank and almost as attractive. Not everyone in the neighborhood had one; they were still considered by some to be a pricey luxury.

The neighbors who didn't have a phone would frequently borrow the phone of a neighbor who did; in these cases, privacy was neither expected nor granted.

My family's phone was serviced by something called a "party line," the Facebook of its day. The phrase party line was entirely appropriate because as soon as you picked up the phone, you could be sure Mrs. Kowalski, the little old lady from down the street who shared the same party line, would quietly lift her receiver and join the party, albeit surreptitiously.

If you discussed anything remotely personal, like, say, the fact you had roast beef for supper and it was yum yum, you could be certain Mrs. Kowalski would gleefully spread the news to the whole neighborhood before sundown.

During my rare phone calls, I would confess to friends regarding gruesome murders I had not committed just to add a little spice to Mrs. Kowalski's otherwise humdrum life. I sometimes claimed to have buried the bodies next to the begonias in her garden.

I'm not singling Mrs. Kowalski out here; both my sisters also listened in on our neighbor's conversations. There were four or five families on our party line and none of us had secrets from any of the others. Just like with Facebook, everybody knew everybody else's business.

So do I worry when I post marginally personal stuff on Facebook? Not really. I grew up without privacy and have learned to get along without it.

I'm just sorry Mrs. Kowalski passed years before the first Commodore 64 rolled off the assembly line and decades before anyone had heard of a social network. She would have loved this stuff. She was a woman who cared deeply about your roast beef supper.

Mike Taylor's new paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Borders Books and most major online booksellers. Email the author at mtaylor325@gmail.com.