The Book No One Reads

It seems like such a simple thing. I have been using it since childhood. I never thought it was at all complicated but it would seem that I am wrong. I am talking about the phone book. That heavy yellow and white paged book I used to sit on as a child at the dinner table. (Before booster seats) We always seem to have several, whether they are for different areas or different years. I have looked up everything from Appliance Repair to Zoo Hours. It has just been brought to my attention, however, that my tech-savvy children topping out at 22 years old do not know how to use this simple information source. I have shown each child how to use them on several occasions and like a foolish parent I believed they had learned the simple principles of alphabetical order and category look up. So it was a sad shock when I asked my son to look something up in the phone book and he just stared at it like it came out of a tomb in Egypt. He didn’t even touch the book. He just looked at it and said, “I’m getting no reception here on my phone. Can’t I just use your computer to look it up?” “Just look it up in the book”, I told him. “It’s in the business pages.” Again he didn’t touch the book. He just looked at it from the side. “Are those the yellow ones?” he asked. By this point I was highly bothered and looked it up myself, showing him how as I went. “Dad”, he told me. “No one uses those things any more. You just look it up on your phone. It’s way faster.” Though he had a point, I was frustrated. “Apparently you can’t do that when you have no service”, I told him. “It is important to at least know how to use a phone book.” “Maybe for your generation”, he said. “People my age don’t have time for that.” I found what I was looking for in less than a minute. How does someone not have time for that? Am I becoming an albatross in a society of eagles? I cannot be the only one to still use the book. In past blogs I have mentioned how lost I would be without my cell phone. If my children are any indication, though, this generation would be totally incapacitated without them. Technology is great; but even eagles have to come down to earth at some point.