Today I opened my mailbox, and there it was, my tri-annual phone book! It seems every few months I’m getting a new phone book for free!
I love books. I truly do.
I even tried publishing my own book.
But, in this age of computers I have no need of a printed telephone book.
I imagine some people who are not connected to the Internet need a phone book.
I haven’t used a phone book in many years! There was a time when the phonebook was an integral part of our lives. A bare necessity!
Like the home phone, it’s obsolescence is imminent and inevitable.
I have strange memories from when I was a kid, growing up in the sixties, of the Toronto phone book. It was always dirty in the old phone booths of Superman fame.
Those tired, well-thumbed, nasty fat phone books always had a smell of their own. And when you looked something up it was always that one page that was ripped out!
They conjured up thoughts of winos, hookers, and dirty old men.
I can’t say this phone book won’t wind up at the public library, in the free giveaway box, or in the garbage can. It most likely will.
If someone could give me a good reason to keep it I might, but so far I haven’t found one.
These days all I have to do is ask my voice-activated smartphone via Google to tell me the phone number for such and such a business.
Some people find practical functionality with phone books. Not as reference materials per se, but as props!
Propping up that wobbly cabinet leg or propping open a window or a door.
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