Using public telephone boxes

[wannabefreeParticipant]

Hi everyone.  Some of the older ones of us will remember not having a mobile phone, and using public telephone boxes in the street… The ones with windows, and a coin box. Even earlier, where you had to push button A or B… Mainly, in the UK, they were Red cubicles, with the telephone apparatus, A shelf, and sometimes, telephone directories made of Paper. The floor would often be wet… They were sometimes used as toilets… Who knows what we were standing in… But what about public telephones? Were they ever cleaned? The receiver held up to our ears… By hand… The dial… Was that ever cleaned? We never knew… Maybe the post office employed people to go around cleaning the phone boxes. But how often? Everyone would use a public phone when out, either shopping or whatever. In a restaurant the telephone could be brought to your table while you were eating a bread roll with your soup…  Plugged in the wall for connection. That’s how people would phone for a taxi to get them home after a night out… We did, didn’t we? And we survived… We were okay… People didn’t all sue each other then… Fast forward to today. We use mobile phones… Smart phones even. To be honest, I actually use my phone so much, that the case is beginning to fall apart… It’s down to the fabric in places… To be fair, I’ve probably never cleaned it. If I tried it would probably fall apart… For some reason, the phone is okay…  And, being honest with ourselves… We’ve never washed our hands to answer the phone, Have we? And we’ve been using telephones all our lives… Just what is on the phone case? I haven’t the faintest idea. Really… I just don’t know… But it has always been okay… That is evidence…  The Covid situation has us using antibac gel and face masks in public. And that is fine. The science supports it. As does social distancing. We follow the Covid rules… That is important for ours, and other peoples safety.  We don’t need to wash all the shopping, because we never have needed to. Although I do admit to, when making a hot drink and opening a new milk bottle, I take the green screw top off, then wash hands briefly before taking off the inner foil seal. No one else I know does… It is a gentle throwback from working in a care home… We don’t know what is on the bottles… BUT, In a care home I was trying to avoid being sued, by people who were out to get as much money as they could… Thinking rationally about it, The checkout operator scans everything non-stop, sometimes very quickly… Everything is on everything… And always has been… We don’t get ill… We don’t get ill… Supermarkets and fast food restaurants would have all gone out of business… In those places, the only place to wash hands is in the loo… And not everyone washes their hands when returning to the restaurant… And yet we are reasonably safe… We’ve always been okay…  So…. Back to the telephone… We text messages, we keep the phone in our pocket… Very close to our seating arrangements… To be honest. I’ve never cleaned my phone… I wouldn’t know what to use, in order to avoid damaging it. And they aren’t cheap… But that has always been the case… Ever since we started using mobile phones… So, logically speaking, away from Covid, our mobile phones are safe… Always have been, since we were children crawling about on the floor, before we could walk… This is proof… We are good people… I don’t yet know what to put on here next Sunday afternoon… Any suggestions?  In the meantime, God bless you for reading.

Wannabe

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