Information please...

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MrsLMB

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I saw this one quite a while back and loved it. Ran across it again today and decided to share for those who have not yet seen it. It's long but so very worth reading all of it.


INFORMATION PLEASE...

This story is unusually long for a post. I try to keep to shorter ones. You may have heard or read it before, I did, many years ago; but I really thought it was great, and would be a benefit to many of us to ponder. Enjoy!

When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box.

I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it. Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person - her name was "Information, Please" and there was nothing she did not know. "Information, Please" could supply anybody's number and the correct time.

My first personal experience with this genie-in the-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be any reason in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy.

I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the foot stool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear. "Information, Please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.

A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear, "Information."

"I hurt my finger," I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.

"Isn't your mother home?" came the question. "Nobody's home but me." I blubbered.

"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.

"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts." "Can you open your icebox?" she asked. I said I could.

"Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.

After that, I called "Information, Please" for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk, that I had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts.

Then, there was the time Petey, our pet canary died. I called "Information, Please" and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child, but I was inconsolable.

I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in."

Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone. "Information, Please."

"Information," said the now familiar voice.

"How do you spell fix?" I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. "Information, Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall.

As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy. A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about half an hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information, Please." Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well, "Information." I hadn't planned this but I heard myself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"

There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now." I laughed. "So it's really still you," I said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time."

"I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls."

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.

"Please do," she said. "Just ask for Sally." Three months later I was back in Seattle. A different voice answered, "Information."

I asked for Sally.

"Are you a friend?" She asked.

"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "Sally has been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."

Before I could hang up she said, "Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you."

The note said, "Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean."

I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant. Never underestimate the impression you may make on others. Whose life have you touched today?

Author Unknown
 
mrs, i simultaneouly like and wonder about the agenda of your recent posts.

i can appreciate the sentiment having had a childhood before the (western) world became morose out of necessity, but today your parents eould be considered neglective, allowing a young child to be left alone, and have acces to tools.

times are a changin', and before anyone says for the worse, just stop and think about for whom.
 
Aw heck, if my parents raised us now like they did then, they'd have lost us long ago...we lived through our childhood.
 
yeah, i agree. i try so hard to let my boy live his childhood with as much freedom to experience things by himself as possible, so i've become a ninja dad. i'm watching, but he doesn't know i'm there.

hey, maybe i've just created a new term, ninja parents, rather than helicopter parents.
 
Mom used to stand in the window and watch us walk across the huge field (there and back) to the gas station to buy Dad's cigarettes. All three of us went or no one went.
 
Mom used to stand in the window and watch us walk across the huge field (there and back) to the gas station to buy Dad's cigarettes. All three of us went or no one went.

Ha ! ... Oh wow .. I had forgotten that we also used to go to buy smokes for our parents. I think I was probably no more than 10 years old.
 
My childhood was filled with parents. And they weren't mine. If you did something wrong, there was always a mother in the window and saw everything we did. Then our parents found out. We played in the streets. And so did my kids. Today, parents are afraid to let their kids play outside and find their own amusement. We all had our own "Information Please." You could go to any mother on the street and ask a question, get a band aid for a scrape,or even earn a nickel for running to the corner store. Today every one of those parents would be arrested for "Child Endangerment". :angel:
 
These kids today really don't have a clue as to what a real childhood was like. We could entertain ourselves with an empty can or playing tag with a group of kids from all over the neighborhood. You could go out and play without any worries and could trust the parents on any given street.

I am so glad I got in on what was a real childhood. Sometimes being the oldest one in a group have the best memories. I pity today's youth.
 
Ha ! ... Oh wow .. I had forgotten that we also used to go to buy smokes for our parents. I think I was probably no more than 10 years old.

When I was 16, I worked at a local fast food place. Regularily a couple little boys, around 9 or 10, would come in and buy a pack of Luckies for their mom, along with their burgers and fries, while she waited in the car.
 
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ah, the good old days.

when cigarettes were good for you, and certain people knew their place... :ermm:

i understand the sentiment, but object to the myopic views in a larger than small town, ethnocentric sense.

just my opinion, of course.
 
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A quarter, a nickel and a dime...it was nothing to double that and pick up two packs...my Dad still kicks himself in the butt for sending his kids to go buy his cigarettes.
 
A few years back when the city and state started on their "No Smoking" anywhere campaign, they posted signs in stores that you had to be 17 to buy cigarettes. Now it is 18. You used to see a bunch of young kids hanging outside stores asking grownups to buy cigarettes for them as they were going in. Now you don't see any. And the City and State send underage age kids into stores as a sting. You can bet you will hear it on the news that night. And the store loses their cigarette license for ten days. That is a major hit in their pocket.

In the winter Spike gets my cigarettes for me. Only because it is too dangerous for me to go out on my scooter. But now that the good weather is here I go and get my own. I don't ask anyone to buy them for me. Even though Spike smokes also. I also can't take he scooter out in the rain. I can't get the console wet. So when I know it is going to rain, I make sure I have what I need in the house early on. Including cigarettes. :angel:
 
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