Innocents Abroad
In the summer of 1980 I left for Austria to start my sophomore year at Notre Dame as an exchange student at the University of Innsbruck. I was gone for ten months. Communication back home was very simple … twenty pre-paid air mail letters that folded to make their own envelopes. I was pretty good at writing two letters a month to my parents. My mom saved them and gave them to me when I returned. I read them a few years ago and winced at how worldly and wise I thought I was at the sage old age of eighteen.
Through the mail we also coordinated two phone calls – I remember one was on my birthday. I walked to the post office where there were a half-dozen long distance phone booths. I’d tell the operator I wanted to make a collect call to the United States and gave the number. When an international line opened up – that required a ten or fifteen minute wait – the operator would call back and dial home for me. I’d talk to my parents for five minutes and let them know I was doing well, and they’d give me family news. I think my dad said those five minute calls cost about $25 each.
My daughter left for Dublin a few weeks ago for an eight week journalism internship arranged through the University of Kansas. She’s been to Europe five times previously, but always with the family and never to Ireland. She left her passport at a public place twice on those previous trips. She drove halfway to Omaha trying to get to the Kansas City airport not too long ago. There was plenty of reason to fret about her flying off to Dublin for a few months. I often wondered, in the weeks prior to her departure, what sort of emergency could transpire, and if I would need to fly over there.
Well, I have been in closer communication with my daughter the last two weeks than at any other point in the past year! I talk to her as I eat my morning cereal while she Skype’s with my wife. Texts flow continuously via WhatsApp. I see the pictures of her daily exploits as she posts them on Facebook. We read each other’s blogs on the internet. I arrived in Las Vegas for a convention on Sunday, and while eating lunch watched the European soccer tournament “with her” while she sipped a Guinness in a pub.
I don’t think any of this real-time contact, which has provided me with incredible peace of mind, is costing a single cent. I love technology.
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