The very first time I used a telephone was when my dad and I were over at my aunt and uncle's house. They had a telephone - we didn't. My dad showed me how to hold the phone to my ear and told me to talk to my mum. They said she was in the hospital. I heard her voice. I remember panicking and screaming to everybody to get my mother out. I thought she was trapped inside the black box!
They calmed me down and tried to explain how the phone worked. The fact that nobody else was panicking was some comfort, but I wasn't convinced that this telephone thing did what they said it did and that my mother wasn't inside of it. I heard her voice explaining that she wasn't trapped inside the telephone and that she was alright. I felt a bit better.
Sometime later, dad showed me a book about telephones. It had pictures of people talking to each other. There were pictures of other people who plugged wires together so people could speak to the right person.
I wanted to know why we didn't have a telephone.
. . .
"Rabbits don't need telephones," stated the rabbit. "Our ears are large enough that we can hear just about everything from anywhere."
"I can't imagine me with ears that big," I said.
"It might be an improvement."
If the rabbit wasn't so large he might have had his ears tied in a knot after that comment. "So the bigger the ears, the better we hear?"
"Oh no!" said the rabbit. "Not at all. Imagine talking on that telephone contraption to someone. Just how much would they hear if you had forgotten to dial the number?"
"Nothing, I don't think."
"And yet, how many times have you talked to someone face to face without getting their attention first."
"None!"
"How do you know? They may have been looking at you, but how do they heard what you said? The sound of your words may have gone into their ears and rattled around a bit, but if the sound didn't get any further, then there was no communication."
I was trying to imagine little people inside my head plugging and unplugging telephones lines from my ears to my brain.
"Did you hear what I said?" asked the rabbit.
"What?" I seemed to have a knack for getting the rabbit riled up. "What did you say?" I asked.
"See! Typical!" said the rabbit getting upset.
"You said that people may be looking as though they are paying attention, but that it is no indication that their ears were plugged into their brain? Sounds may have gone down their ears and stopped before it got to the brain..."
"...consequently there was no communication," finished the rabbit, settling down.
"So how can I tell if their brain has picked up the telephone."
"First you have to dial their number," said the rabbit, "and then you have to maintain communication."
"How?" I asked.
"First the contact. Call them by their name. Now they know you are talking to them specifically.
"Who else would I be talking to?"
"Good point, but by calling their name, you make the conversation personal instead of being general. It indicates that the verbiage that is to follow may be of some importance and that it isn't just something for anyone to listen to or ignore as they see fit."
"Oh, I see."
"See or hear?" asked the rabbit.
"I hear," I corrected.
"Good! Secondly, maintain contact by asking the odd question. Do you see what I mean?" said the rabbit asking me a question to make sure that I was still paying attention.
"Yes."
"Great! Now I know that you are still in contact and that one of those little people inside your head hasn't accidentally disconnected the line between your ears and your brain."
Just the thought of somebody or something in my ear made me stick my fingers in them and jiggle them about.
"Asking questions keeps people focused on listening to you, and for them to answer proves that their brain must have heard what you said."
"Is that always true?" I asked.
"Not always. Some people can answer as a reflex action, but the more complicated the intermittent questions, the more attention will pay to what you are saying."
"So, Mr Smart Rabbit, once I have their attention and maintained it, then I am communicating. Is that right?" I asked.
"Very good, very good," applauded the rabbit.
"And that's all there is to it?"
"Not exactly."
"There's more?"
"In life, there is always more," explained the rabbit
I was beginning to feel ... I didn't know what, but I knew I was feeling it."
"Next, there is the problem of retention."
Now we had problems. I hated problems. And retention! That sounded like something they gave us at school, for not paying attention, but I think that was called detention. Whatever it was, I knew that I hated shun words. Perhaps retention was the opposite of detention, or was that - attention?
"Pay attention, apply some retention, and you won't get detention!" ordered the rabbit.
"So what does retention have to do with anything?" I asked.
"What is the point of going to all this effort of getting someone's attention, making sure that you are communicating with their brain and not just with their ears, only to have them forget what you said?" said the rabbit flopping his ears around.
"Not much I guess," I said laughing. "I can't flop my ears around like that."
"Forget about my ears, and start using yours," mused the rabbit. "What I want you to do is go away and think about what we talked about. In particular, think of ways you can make sure people have listened to you."
"Is that like homework," I asked.
The rabbit just smiled.
. . .
I went home to my dad. Mum was still in the hospital. She was getting me a brother or a sister. When I had talked to her on my aunt and uncle's telephone I had asked her to pick out a brother for me, but now I come to think about it, I don't know if she had been paying attention. Perhaps, her ears had not been joined to her brain when I'd asked.
. . .