Why am I talking to you?

The telephone, as everyone knows, was invented more than a hundred years ago by Alexander Graham Bell Ameritech Sprint. Although there have been astonishing developments in telephone technology over the years, one of the phone's most useful purposes -- especially if you are over 70 -- is that it allows you to talk to another person in your own house.

Why would you need to talk on the phone to someone who is right there in the same house with you? I don't know either, but it happens all the time at my parents' home. I'll call them up for a nice long daughter-to-parent conversation, only to be forgotten as the two of them -- who can go for days without talking to anyone besides each other -- proceed to carry on a discussion. Here is a typical example:

Me: So, what have you two been up to lately? Staying out of the emergency room, I hope.
Dad: That reminds me -- Violet, did you pick up my prescription?
Mom: What prescription?
Dad: The one from the heart doctor. You know, I gave it to you yesterday.
Mom: You didn't give me any prescription. From Dr. Ugendorf?
Dad: No, no, the other guy...what's his name...
Mom: Dr. Kleinehut?
Dad: Yeah! Dr. Kleinehut.
Mom: What about Dr. Kleinehut?
Dad: I don't know, you brought him up.
Me: Hello! Does anyone remember I'm here?
Mom and Dad, startled: Who's that?

Other favorite topics of in-house phone conversations are whether or not the mail has been retrieved, who is responsible for eating the last piece of cake without asking, and who was the last one to use the toilet before it broke. If I didn't interrupt these discussions, they could talk to each other for a half hour, hang up, and completely forget they had been talking to me. "Now, why were we on the phone?" one would say, and they would both shrug and go off in search of the forgotten prescription, or the delivered mail.

This would actually be a neat trick to discourage telemarketers. Assuming there's a pause in the telemarketer's monologue, you and another member of your household could start a pointed conversation about, say, how you're getting a little rusty on your shooting skills and could really use some target practice, or how you miss Aunt Beulah since she passed away and isn't it a shame she didn't tell you she was deathly allergic to shrimp. Before long you'd be listening to a dial tone.

Unfortunately Alexander Graham Ameritech Bell's mother, being deaf, most likely was not able to take advantage of his invention to talk to her son while he was in the house. It might have come in handy if she'd needed a prescription filled.