by REBECCA SPARROW
It was a punishment straight out of The Brady Bunch.
When I was fifteen, I ran up such a toilet-roll long phone bill (including an eye-wateringly long call to a cousin in the UK) that my parents punished me by handing me a egg-timer. Oh I could keep talking on the phone alright, but I was limited to 2 minutes.
To say I loved talking on the phone back then is an understatement.
Our landline was an extension of who I was. An accessory to my life as important as my New Kids On The Block t-shirt and my banana hairclip. I came home from school, ate a chocolate Yogo while I watched The Henderson Kids and then rang my best friend Lara or Brooke or Jo.
That’s what we did. We talked on the phone for hoooooooours. And what did we discuss? God knows. Mostly we brainstormed ways to make different year 12 boys fall madly in love with us. *ahem*
But somewhere between 1987 and 2012, something happened. I stopped wearing stonewash denim. And I now inwardly groan and think “Now what?” when my phone rings.
Yep. Answering the phone is like a chore.
I’m not entirely sure why this is but I have become anti-phone in a big way.
And I know I’m not alone. Just this week Miranda Kerr admitted in an interview that she hates taking phone calls … even from Orlando Bloom. When asked how she and the British actor manage to keep their relationship going despite their global schedules, Kerr said: