If you have been in PYPT at the end of the show or listened to the recording, you’ll hear a pattern of me ending the show with “goodbye Wilma”. Wilma had a pattern of behaviour that left an indelible memory on my life.
I was raised in rural Ontario in the 1960’s (yes, I’m showing my age). In those days most homes had what was called a party line phone. No, we didn’t use the phone to play music while we held a party. There were multiple families on the same phone line. Each family had a specific ring. In theory you only answered the phone if it was your ring.
Telephone companies were local. The switchboard would receive incoming calls where an operator (or several if it was busy enough) would answer the incoming call and then manually connect the call through the switchboard. Operators were notorious for opening keys and listening in on conversations. Nothing like getting their gossip right from the horse’s mouth.
Operators were not the only ones known for a pattern of listening into others calls. Say hello to Wilma. She was the wife of the farmer who lived next door to my family. Now you’d think that raising a family, looking after a home and doing the many other chores farm wives did that she’d be too busy to listen in to others calls.
I never really knew if the party line was not very busy and taking time to pick up the receiver and listen in didn’t take her away from other duties or if she just willingly gave up the time. She did manage to pick up the phone on an awful lot of calls.
On occasion my mother would be asked over for coffee in the afternoon. She took me along on many of those occasions, warning me within an inch of my life that I was not to open my mouth at anything Wilma did while we were there.
It was a bit of a wise thing for her to do ahead of time or I likely would have had something to say when Wilma nonchalantly reached over, picked up her phone and listened in while the visit was taking place.
The first time it happened, I was shocked. At home, if we as much as moved toward the phone when it was not our ring, our mother would roar to bring us to an abrupt halt. She never batted an eyelash at Wilma’s behaviour, reminding me later, we don’t tell people what to do in their own homes.
She became so well known for this pattern of eavesdropping behaviour that we would finish our calls by saying goodbye to our caller and then say goodbye to Wilma who was likely still on the line. She didn’t often hang up during the call, didn’t want the click on the line to give her away, even though everyone knew she was already there.
I told a shorter version of this story in PYPT one night and someone commented at the end of the show that I didn’t say goodbye to Wilma. From the quip, my pattern of bidding Wilma goodbye at the end of the show emerged.
If there’s an afterlife, I expect that Wilma is comfortably seated on a couch with a phone to her ear. No comment if that is a torment or heaven for her.
Goodbye Wilma!
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