The Wake

The Wake-Up Call I Needed After All

Technology has made some things obsolete. But others, like kindness and generosity, are things the world will always require.

By Deborah Skolnik 

Also in Reader's Digest Magazine October 2014

“What’s that?” my ten-year-old daughter, Genie, asked, peering over my shoulder. She’d caught me laughing at a piece of mail I’d just opened. “Wake Up Service,” it read in crude stencil, “$2.50 per call leave message.” At the bottom was a phone number and a drawing of a rotary phone, like the one my great-aunt Sara had owned 40 years ago.

“Is that mail funny?” Genie asked.

“Not really,” I admitted. “It’s just outdated.”

She frowned. “What’s a wake-up call?” she asked, proving my point. I explained how, before smartphones, people sometimes paid someone to wake them with a call. “Who sent this flyer?” she pressed.

“Probably someone older, who doesn’t think wake-up calls are outdated,” I ventured, “and could use some money.”

Her eyes lit up. “Can we order a wake-up?” she asked.

I snorted. “We don’t need it.”

The next day, I was awakened by Genie standing by my bed, poking me with the flyer. “Can we order a wake-up call?” she pestered.

“We don’t need one,” I reminded her. “At least I don’t. I have you.”

That evening, the flyer was still on my nightstand. I picked it up and headed for the recycling bin, past Genie, who was doing her homework. “Wait!” she shrieked. She leaped up and snatched the sheet away.

“I feel sorry for the wake-up man, if he needs some money,” she said, tearing up. “Can’t we order?”

I looked at the flyer with its drawing of a rotary phone. I remembered, again, my great-aunt Sara and her rotary phone. As a kid, I’d visited her over Labor Day, when Jerry Lewis would host his annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Inevitably, Aunt Sara would squeeze my hand, then reach for the rotary phone, dialing the number on the screen. Holding the bulky receiver between us, we’d announce to the operator,...