Dark Confessions From Deep In The Cave Of Cool - The Pink Princess Phone

There was a time in my youth when a second phone line in the house was a real treat.

I already lived in the basement of the house with my own bathroom, access to a deep freeze full of frozen treats, a water bed, and my fantastic 13 inch black and white TV (with 13 channels) that I won by selling the most new newspaper subscriptions for the Winnipeg Free Press.

At 13, the world was my oyster. Only one thing would have made my world perfect - my own telephone line in my basement command center.

At the same time, the military decided to upgrade the base homes and would install up to three phone jacks in every house.

Suddenly we didn't have to sit around the kitchen table (because the phone was on the kitchen wall and it's cord never reached long enough) if we wanted to talk to someone. Now you could take the phone with you to another room to talk in private. Suddenly, not everyone in the family knew your business because they couldn't over hear what was being talked about.

When the phone rang in the middle of the night my folks no longer had to navigate their way to the kitchen in the dark. They now had a phone jack in their bedroom.

I managed to convince them that putting one in my basement would be a good idea too - just in case a fire broke out and I needed to phone the fireman so they knew where to find me before my goose was right and truly cooked. My folks fell for it.

Now we needed two more phones to go with the ordinary kitchen house phone. One for my parent's bedside table and one in my swanky basement bachelor pad. After much searching, my mother found a cheap phone that she thought would work just perfect for me.

Unfortunately she saw nothing wrong with giving me a PINK PRINCESS PHONE! At first, I rejected the idea entirely and though of painting the phone or covering it with stickers. However, my father came up with a solution that was another elegant example of his problem solving skills.

From the garage he brought in a wooden box with a hinged lid. It looked like it must have contained munitions at one time. In the back of the box he had drilled a hole for the phone cord go through while the phone rested on some velvet in the varnished box - like having the Batphone at my disposal - only the pink version of that communication device.

So that is how I got my princess phone. No one could see it until they heard it ringing in the box on my coffee table and I opened the box to answer it. It always got the conversation started when visitors saw that and few judged my pretty phone.

The lesson here is to take what you are given, remain cutting edge with the technology you use or the world will pass you by.