I totally understand. I don’t like the phone. In fact, no one has my landline number except for my two daughters. I don’t want to be unexpectedly talking to someone while I’m relaxing at home. And no matter what time of the day or night it is, I want to have complete control of who I talk to and when.

The cell service in my house is terrible, so if I want to talk to the person who calls my cell, I tell them I will call them back on my landline. If I don’t feel like talking, I just let it do what it’s going to do, and that is usually about a minute of connection and then sputtering and dying and dead.

I talk to one of my daughters every ten days to two weeks, and we have a nice, long (about 15–20 minute) chat. My other daughter that I see two days a week calls every day about twice, but our calls are short (5–10 minutes).

When I would have a boyfriend, I could stay on the phone for hours, but that was usually within the first year when we were just getting to know one another. Those calls were enjoyable but ended as soon as we moved in together.

And then there’s my best friend, and we schedule our calls a few days in advance. We have to because we never talk less than three-four hours. Never. We talk about everything. We go from one topic to the next and then the next. We free associate — saying everything that comes to mind without censoring our thoughts. We laugh until our stomachs hurt. It’s absolutely what you described as a phone date. Yes, a “slippery, lucky tumble.”