What if I hooked up a bunch of old phones to our now useless Michigan Bell jacks that dot the landscape of the interior of our home? Our walls are chock full of RJ-11’s, and if you know what I mean, you too might have grown up at the Wonderland Mall Radio Shack. “Let’s go to the mall” Dad would often say, since he knew that I liked Radio Shack and the food court. I had the catalogs. I knew model numbers. I submitted my address hundreds of times and was a gold member of the battery club. While I didn’t end up working at Radio Shack, I do work in the Radio industry and I have been in several shacks. However, I have never met Shaq.

This hobby turned knowledge has come in handy more often than not. For example, I am thinking about taking my old phone collection and plugging one into every phone jack, and allowing the children to call each other, creating an intercom network that won’t give the phone company the satisfaction. –BRRRRINGGGG–“Malachi, Mommy is on line one and needs some answers about the permanent marker.” “Lexi, we have your favorite techno music available in the hallway” or even “please leave a message at the beep, but don’t use up all the tape“, a sentence my children may otherwise never actually hear.

The benefits are obvious. There is even scientific evidence that this may be a good idea, what with the report from the World Health Organization that cell phones are probably not a very good idea, especially for developing brains like the three that live at our house, which, as I mentioned, is dotted with phone jacks which, as I mentioned, currently connect to nothing.