Not again

 We still have a paper phone book

    For those of you under the age of 40, phone books were pretty important items when we had phones hanging on walls in our kitchen.

    By the way, I never misplaced one of those phones.  

    Phone books listed  telephone numbers and addresses for people and businesses in your community.  All you had to do was know the person's last name, and their first name, and you could look it up and find a number to call.

    Granted, because of the system if you were a married woman, people might have to know your husband's name.

    Digression.  When I was a new reporter in town, I went to a women's club meeting to take pictures for a fund raiser.  I don't remember what they were doing, but I took the picture.

    Then I asked for their names to put in the id line under the picture.  All was well until I got to a woman named Ann.  She would not tell me her husband's name, because he was not in the picture, she was.

    I told her the newspaper policy was to use the husband's name because her name was not in the phone book....his was.  If somebody wanted to support the fund raiser they needed a name to call because the paper's policy was not to use phone numbers.

    The discussion went on for a while and she finally relented and gave me the name, but she was not happy about it,

    Years later we still laugh about it.  And when I became editor for a brief while, the policy was changed to include the woman's name and phone number.  But honestly, I can say my ability to read numbers probably resulted in lots of wrong numbers and irritated people.

    Back to the main point.  We have a phone book.

    On the inside cover I have a list of most commonly called numbers:  library, museum hair dresser, barber, plumber, electrician, restaurants.  That way I don't have to keep looking them up.

    But now, I can't find the damn phone book.

    I checked my desk, recycling, the counter, the nook table, the ledge.....nowhere to be found.

    It's just another damned irritation I have in life..... not finding things I did not put away.

    Oh well.....some songs play on endlessly.

Peace and Love