Phone Books

There was a time when I relied on the telephone book. It was a time when I also relied on Saturday morning cartoons, Fruit by the Foot, blanket forts, and my imagination. Beyond a few friends and the time & temperature line, I knew no phone numbers by heart and instead flipped the pages of the phone book in a kitchen drawer religiously.

And then the mid '90s came around, and Al Gore single-handedly built the internets in a garage using duct tape, dental floss, and pixie dust, per an article posted on Wikipedia that I wrote earlier today. Suddenly, dial-up service and its fax-machine-suffering-a-seizure sound effects took residence across the globe, as did online chat rooms, thousands of free AOL trial hours on individual discs, and a new breed of textual, sexual predators.

Oh, and every phone number within a few mouse clicks.

The phone book turned obsolete overnight.

So, why do I still once or twice a year come home to a stack -- a stack -- of various phone books outside my door? And how many phone books does a single home need? You have a city phone book, then you have a greater metro phone book, then you have some yellow pages only, then you have what appears to be an entire phone book devoted to an exorbitance of clean-cut, family-owned insurance companies juxtaposed with action hero-nicknamed attorneys. What am I supposed to do with all these phone books -- even if there was no world wide web? Yes, I'm only 5'9", but I don't think I need 14 booster seats around the apartment.

I'm not much for tree-hugging, but I also don't support the needless waste of a natural resource, primarily when maybe 3% of the recipients of that processed resource actually use it for its intended purpose (so, not as a spanking tool for children, a lopsided table corrector, or a massive paperweight for all those gusts of wind blowing through your kitchen).

Yes, I get it, senior citizens and/or those without internet connectivity will be more inclined to welcome these free, alphabetical indices of phone numbers, but does that truly warrant a delivery to everyone with a door? The ratio of phone book users vs. non-users has to be heavily skewed toward the latter. So, why not only deliver phone books to those who express interest? Perhaps instead of dropping off phone books, flyers with a lone phone number to call to get a free phone book can be left at doors ("Like phone numbers and paper? Call the phone number on this paper to receive a whole book of more phone numbers and more paper!").

Ironically, the only phone number of use but not listed in these delivered phone books is one that you can call to request the ceasing and desisting of their delivery.