When I landed my job in Addison, I spent a lot of time on the phone. I didn’t realize how many calls I’d have to field each day. The first several weeks I was inundated with vendors who hoped to strike up a relationship that would lead to future contracts. When I moved on to Britton to become superintendent, the calls expanded tenfold. They wanted a piece of your ear, so they might one day have a piece of your budget.
It was impossible to memorize everyone’s number, and that became my first experience with a rolodex. A rolodex is a rotating file device used to store business contact information. Its name is a blend of the words rolling and index. Wise vendors had their business cards printed on rolodex cards, thus making it easy to be entered into the file.
With the advent of cell phones, we have “contacts”. Contacts are the people, and businesses, we contact most frequently. My first entry was “me”. I entered my own number because in the beginning I couldn’t remember it. I knew I wouldn’t be calling “me”, but I needed a handy place to store the number when others asked for it.
When I had a rolodex, I updated it as necessary. Sometimes I simply erased outdated numbers. Other times I pulled the card from the roller entirely. It was an archaic way to update my information, but it worked for me. I did my best to purge outdated contents at least once each year.
I got my first cell phone about twenty years ago. As I’ve updated my phones, I’ve transferred the “contact” information from one phone to the next. I’ve added hundreds of numbers over the years, but I haven’t deleted any. They just keep piling up. I have as many as four numbers for a single contact. Some are comprised of cell phone numbers, a home landline, and if they had multiple homes with multiple landlines, that just increases the number of numbers.
When I can’t remember last names, I add important bits of information rather than a last name. I’ve been playing poker with a guy named Roger in The Villages. If he told me his last name, I don’t recall it. He comes up as Roger Poker when he calls me. That’s really all I need to know.
My sister, Jackie, dropped her landline a few years ago, but when I call her, her old land line number is one of my options. It was our family’s original telephone number, Lincoln 32062 (AKA 543-2062). I won’t ever delete it as it remains a tie to simpler times and growing up in Royal Oak with my mom, dad, and two sisters.
There are names of hundreds of former business contacts, teachers and students from forty years of public-school service, thirteen years of consultant work with the Michigan Works system, and a multitude of friends and relatives. I don’t know why I keep them.
I run across my mom’s number, my friend Jim’s, cousin Gene’s, Uncle Harry’s and several others who have passed. They’ll stay with me until I no longer need a list of contacts. With any luck, that will be at least a couple dozen years from now.
Ruth’s number comes up as “Home” because, no matter where we are, that’s what she is to me.