Communication | Can there be too much?

Some days I feel like throwing my cell phone in a river where I can never retrieve it.  It’s with me all the time and it rings and beeps and chimes a lot.  I wish I hadn’t given everyone my cell phone number.  I really like the idea of a stationary phone that stays in my home office.  I can retrieve messages once or twice a day. Better yet, forget the voicemail. I’ll answer it when I’m there. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

Have we become too accessible?  It was 1989 and we were moving. It seems every time we move (and we are in the process of a move right now) it’s a double.  In other words, we end up having temporary quarters before we move into our new home. That was the case in 1989 when we were building a home and there was a 3-month period that we were homeless. Did you ever try to find a very short term rental? We had a 1 year old and a 3-1/2 year old and no place to live that we could be together.

It was the weekend and we were driving around the area of our soon-to-be new digs when we passed by a campground called J&D’s. Out front there were a couple of large campers for sale. Hmmm, this was a beautiful setting; it was summer and maybe…we pulled into the entrance and went up to the office, 2 cute kids in tow, and asked if they rented campers.  "Well, not usually", Barbara, the owner said.  But I could see it right away…she had a soft spot, and in short order we had picked our site by the river and close to the bathroom, and made arrangements to rent their 28 ft. camper for the rest of the season.  We had a grand summer at J&D’s Campground, our temporary home, in the summer of 1989.  We quickly became friends with Sherri & her son, Tarik and the rest of the family that ran the campground.  What more could you want when you had a swimming pool,  a fishing hole, mini-golf and an ice cream store (the cree- mee-freeze), right there for you to use, everyday?

Perfect! This would be a vacation, an adventure and fun! It was all of that, except for one minor thing—there was no phone service, no way for me to communicate to the world outside the campground—and I’m not talking no cell phone service, because no one that I knew  had a cell phone in 1989.  I called the phone company and found out that I could (for a fee) get a phone line run to our camper off the main pole at the front of the campground. We were “the only” folks in that campground that had any kind of phone to their camper.  It is hard to imagine all those people without phone service for weekends or weeks at a time. There was one pay phone on the campground, and it was NOT in constant use.

Look how far we have come and so fast.  So much progress…we can all be reached instantly, by cell phone, text message, facebook, twitter, and more ways than I can count. For me, sometimes it’s just too much, and I long to go back to 1989 when having a life, was having a life. Have we gone too far? Will we go even farther—is it possible to be more accessible than we already are?  Is this whole thing called, communication overrated or abused?   I guess only time will tell. I’d love to hear how you all handle your communication devices and if you like it the way it is, or would prefer to turn the clock back, like I sometimes do.  Please leave your comments and stories in the comment box below and pass this along to your friends if you think they might enjoy a little of days gone by, or if they could add to the conversation as well.

BTW, the folks at J&D are the best! If you are in the area of Elysburg, PA , near Knoebles Amusement Park make sure you stop by J&D's Campground for a day or a week, or a summer; and no need to worry, they have all the amenities you can’t live without…but don’t forget I, Pam Burzynski, was “the first” phone and anomoly at J&D’s.