Once upon a time, in the dark ages known as most of my life, there was only one sound that a phone made. Everyone recognized the sound and knew to answer the phone. Of course, the phone was either at home, at work or in a phone booth. You didn’t hear phones of all the people around you wherever you went. Those peoples’ phones were safe at home ringing away.
Now, unfortunately, most people carry around a portable phone with its own ring tone. If you are fairly inept, you probably still have the tone the phone came with. For instance, all T-Mobile phones sing with the same tone. However, if you have very clever grandchildren, your phone may have been reprogrammed to call out choice noises they have put on your phone while you are otherwise occupied. (This is a general statement. In no way does this even vaguely point to any particular grandchildren I might know.) Then you might be suddenly startled when your purse begins to sing out the signal to start a horse race.
Even more distracting are the random tunes that play loudly in the middle of a church service, even though the cantor has made the standard request to “silence your cell phone before the service begins.” For some reason, the phone owning culprit usually fails to realize that it is her phone ringing away. Suddenly many parishioners are checking their pockets to make sure they aren’t disrupting things. Of course this mass rummaging makes its own interruption.
As for me, I have just turned off the ringer. I think. Unless some unnamed grandchild has turned it back on just before church!
Saved By Words 
I don’t have one, and am fine with it. I figure if I were a medical doctor, or in the movie The Matrix, I might need it, but other than that, eh. Too much noise and instant-demand of my attention for too little return for me. I even schedule my clients by email and not phone.
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I have one and the only three people who have the number are family members. Otherwise, I never give it out. My family does feel more secure when I travel that I can summon help if needed.
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I think that sounds wise. Do you get spam calls or unwanted calls simply because the number exists and marketers must have it in general lists of phone numbers, or are you spared so far?
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I have three phones including the tab I use for reading, they have different tunes. one has no sound so when I receive a call unless I am near it, I just text back. My phones are only for family members and close friends.
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Do you choose pleasant tunes or go with the ones that came with the devices?
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My son uploaded some songs.
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Your post just reminded me of the time when I was a kid and we used to have a landline phone at home. Some of our neighbors would just show up at our place only because they wanted to use our phone. Now it feels like all of it happened ages ago as every living person I know has a cell phone.
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We had a party line first. Did you? You had to wait to see if the ring was for us or the other party.
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Oh that’s interesting but we didn’t have that.
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It was all that was available when I was very young. We had to be cautioned to not eavesdrop. Which of course made us eavesdrop.
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Good old times!
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I control the use & the demands of my mobile ph, it doesn’t control me! That is a big learning curve for everyone I believe.
Today I left it in the car while I had a picnic with an old friend 🙂 Jennifer
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Isn’t it amazing that people sit with each other while staring at phones?
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Sad isn’t it…
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Mine stays on silent!
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I am a terrible culprit of forgetting to turn my phone to silent, but I usually disrupt meetings [smile].
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How about church?😇😇
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I don’t take my cell phone into Church. I leave it at home.
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I should remember that.
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