My Coffee With Niles

If it's true that our bodies house a soul, which has journeyed through time and traveled through space, then I can't also believe we are all the same. I've met 3 year olds and 90 year olds, and through thorough comparison and inspection, I couldn't tell you who was older.

I spent my teenage era convinced there was an aging sweet tea drinking southern woman inside me. It never served as reason enough to allow me to stay home from geometry exams, but it made my parents fear for my mental health. They never really understood I was just trying to undermine their authority by proclaiming I thought I was older than them. Yet I always did feel older than I really was. And as long as my skin can fight the years of aging, I think no one, save my parents, and the two people who read this blog, will have to be the wiser.

All of this being so, I still have a need for the modern. A new cell phone as often as a mobile servicer allows. A knowledge of the news at its breaking. A politico following. I'm an interested 2009er. But I also adore times of past. Whether it be due to the still to be proven old southern woman inside my 5'6 blonde frame.

I craved a rotary phone at one time, and as I asked, heaven and a local thrift store delivered. It wasn't the candy pink or yellow I had in childhood mental scrapbooks of a wall mounted phone I rushed to answer at Grandma and Grandpas. It was black. And it's price probably 200 times that of it's original sell for amount. But it had been as I desired and as mine it would become.

It would be more of a shabby chic decorative piece, with little otherwise value. Though I hooked it up in case.

Having had issue with my mobile device, I called the company for repair. Knowing troubleshooting is possible only by calling on a phone other than the problemed one, I used the rotary.

Interesting thing about rotaries. Aside from the 4 American businesses who plan for those who call from rotaries, no one else is enabled. Unable to "key" in my selections, the automated voice on the other end growing more frustrated with my lack of response, disconnected. If it hadn't been automated, I'd imagine her saying something like "get a real phone, idiot."

I called back on my mobile.

"You know you really have to call on a landline-"

"Yes I know. Long story, long.....


...so if you could call me on my rotary phone, I think then we could troubleshoot my cell phone."

"Ok calling now, mam'"

"Oh I forget to add, sir, my rotary phone doesn't ring. So tell me when you're calling, and then I will just pick it up."

I'm typically late to the party. And it's not my first time at the rodeo. I was born on a Tuesday, just not last Tuesday. But my life, resembles that of a circus, at a more curious inspection. Between a cell phone born in 2009, and a rotary phone born in 1950, both can dial out, but only one can key in selections, and neither can perform any other functions of a typical telephone.

I think through the next 30 minutes he was in many way pleased that I wasn't as ill minded as I had originally given off the perception. My mobile was repaired, and my rotary shall, in the way it was bought, be fancied mostly for decorative glances. I have at least one phone that can make, and receive, telephone calls, text messages, and with satellite's assistance, perhaps some data services.

While I juggled the rotary phone cord, and the cell phone, a laptop on my knee, and eyed the time I needed to jump in my car and be off, I thought of my favorite Frasier episode. Frasier and Niles are sitting at the coffee shop, having just ordered their most specific coffee orders, and sending them back repeatedly for fixing. Niles asks Frasier if he's happy. Philosophers and psychologists and other people who have opinions have held that once you ask this question, you aren't. Something, I reason, like stopping to take a photograph, and removing yourself from a moment. But I stray. Frasier and Niles, at the coffee shop, the entire episode revolving around Frasier, and his answer. Moments before the twenty-two minute end of the sitcom, Frasier, finally getting his coffee order right, says, that he is.

I left my friend at the phone company, after repairing the cell, and jetted to Rosh Hashanah evening services. I read hebrew, and sang with the choir. I asked that everyone I love be remembered for another year. I heard a sermon, and listened to a cantor. And when all was done I retreated to our family home. To finish off our dinner, and for me the dessert. I sat with my family. It didn't need to be 2009. It could have 1950. Or the dawn of creation. I wouldn't have needed a cell phone. I wouldn't have needed a rotary phone. Just people who I love, and people who love me back so that I could tell Niles, what took Fraiser twenty two minutes and the perfect cup of coffee to get to.

I'm happy.