Page 43 - WhyAsInY

WHo are tHese PeoPle? (Part 1)
marked 3 (D E F) and 7 (P Q R S) instead of rotating the dial by first inserting one’s index finger in the hole marked 3 and pulling the dial around, and then doing the same with the hole marked 7. Then, even though the correspondence between the numbers and the letters did not change, some creative genius decided, for no reason that I can dis- cern, that one should not say, “Esplanade 7-2735” or even “ES-7-2735.” Rather, the home phone should be called “377-2735,” and the office phone should be called “377-8646.” I guess that those mellifluous sequences are easier to remember and are far more meaningful than their predecessors. Thus, to ensure that people spoke like machines, we also lost Cloverdale, Murray Hill, Baldwin, Algonquin, Gramercy, Buckminster, and many more. Had AT&T sooner exercised its influence, one of Elizabeth Taylor’s most famous movies, the one for which she won her first Oscar, would have been marketed as the very sultry 2-8-8.
The fact that my mother answered my father’s office phone served another purpose. From time to time, I would see her take a call, get the caller’s name, consult a list that was near the phone, face my father, raise her arm with her elbow initially at shoulder height, make a fist, pump her arm up and down three times, say nothing, and then hand the receiver to my father, who would then speak to the patient. It seems that my mother’s gesturing was done to signal to my father that the patient was covered by HIP (Health Insurance Plan), the consequence of which was that my father, having received a flat fee for taking on a panel of patients, would not be entitled to charge for their visits in the office or his calls to their homes. Accordingly, my ever-vigilant mom was prepar- ing my dad for the possibility that the caller was, in her judgment, likely to demand more attention than would a private patient who paid a fee for each service. But, why that peculiar motion? Well, she explained, a patient covered by Health Insurance Plan was commonly referred to as a “HIP” patient. I still didn’t get it. Why not signal by placing a hand on the hip? Wouldn’t that have been a simple way to accomplish the task? No. Too subtle. Her incomprehensible motion would be sure to catch my father’s attention and convey the idea. But how? “It’s simple,” she explained. It was her way of pantomiming the cheer “Hip, Hip, Hooray!”
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