Can You Hear Me Now?

When my cell phone rings I look to see who is calling then I answer, "hello?" like I don't know who it is.  Sometimes I will even go another step and follow with a "Oh, hey!" adding the notion of surprise to my misleading greeting when I fake find out who it is.  Why?

The reason is that I was brought up on phones that rang and you answered them with sincerity.  It is a lingering habit formed before ATMs existed, and I have not been able to shake it.  I have taken note, however and was inspired to think about how we initiate phone conversations.  As an experiment, my friend and I are attempting to dispose of salutations and get right to the point of the call.  RING RING.  We are shaving ten, even fifteen seconds off the front end of each conversation.  So if you do some simple math:  2 billion cell phones on earth, averaging 6.5 calls per day times 10 seconds of vaporous hellotalk is about 4122 years per day!  Check it.  Go ahead.

The big idea actually hit as a result of this line of thinking.  Too big, really. I am going to bury it for a few years.  Let things mature.