"You have one message..."

I miss coming home to the single, solitary red blinking light of an answering machine. The joy of being the first to come home and check the machine. It was exhilarating! That feeling has since been upgraded or even replaced every year or so with a new piece of technology.

First came pagers. (I was obsessed with the movie Clueless when pagers were hot and insisted on getting a white one to match the one Cher's best friend Dee had :) Next came cell phones. I remember my first one. Answering machines were still being used at this point. But now you got to check your voicemail AND your machine messages. Next emails became really important. Communication seemed to go digital over night. What was once a phone call or meeting in person became replaced with a quick email.

Text messages would soon be all the rage. I don't even remember getting my first text message or who it was from. I think it was in the latter part of college. Soon Facebook and My Space began rivaling phone calls, emails, and even the prestigious text messages for our attention. I remember when I first got on My Space. I was completely, 100% obsessed. It was almost unhealthy. Now, I am over My Space and am in love with Facebook. It has become the virtual Gossip Girl, especially since they recently (much to my dismay) changed the layout, and now every post, note, etc is made public on your Home page.

The latest craze is Blackberry Messaging. It is basically an instant message/text message type system that is free to all Blackberry users. I scoffed it at first and now communicate regularly with my fellow Blackberry toting friends. No more phone calls...it's Blackberry messaging all the way folks. A small red light blinks on your phone every time you have an email, voicemail, text, Blackberry message, etc. So, what was once a lovely red light blinking on your answering machine has become an annoying red light that blinks incessantly almost 24 hours per day. (I have tried to find a way to turn this feature off but have been unable to do so.)

I guess I just miss having only one form of communication to check. I can sympathize with the girls on He's Just Not That Into You when they talk about how in dating you are now possibly rejected by up to 7 forms of communication instead of just one. With everyones' business made public online, it is impossible just to be. I miss the simple days of racing home to find out if I had any messages on my machine...to see if he called, or if someone was thinking of me. I fear what will happen to the next generation of mass communication users. Will they even know how to mail a letter or pick up the telephone?

That being said, I guess it's time to close. My little red light is blinking...