Especially puzzling to me is why certain people call those so-called party lines. First of all, the people on the other end may be actors trained to keep you talking. Second of all, there are at least six billion people in the world. If you really want to talk to someone, there is bound to be a real person around, locally or not too far away, to talk to or get to know.
Finally, even if the people on the other end of a party line are just there to talk and not actors, rather than to just make money off your loneliness, why take the chance of perhaps meeting a Jeffrey Dahmer, an ax murderer or murderess, a fatal attraction type, a criminal, swindler, rapist, or other undesirable dreg(s) of humanity?
[Note: the original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in 1992 and was later part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays.]
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