TODDLER FEELINGS HELPLINE
January 5, 2019 4:10 PM   Subscribe

Hello, you have reached the Toddler Feelings Helpline. Please choose from the following options:
posted by waving (24 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
#3 FTW
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:33 PM on January 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm going to establish the 6 year old feelings helpline, and if you are bored but don't want to actually do anything, please just scream angrily at the next person you come across.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:38 PM on January 5, 2019 [13 favorites]


This is something I assume is created with an old touchtone phone in mind. Which means it means nothing to babies dealing with phones they would encounter today. This entire premise is from 1995.

Amusing, though.
posted by hippybear at 4:50 PM on January 5, 2019


My home phones still have physical buttons. What kind of glossy space future do you live in?

From the 9 year old feelings helpline: if you needed to go to the toilet when you were in the restaurant, but dad didn't hear the one time you asked, please hold until you're a mile from the nearest public toilet and then complain loudly that it's not your problem if nobody listens to you, and can we get some ice cream?
posted by pipeski at 4:53 PM on January 5, 2019 [8 favorites]


People still have home phones?
posted by lovecrafty at 5:22 PM on January 5, 2019 [7 favorites]


If you lost a life in the video game and now can never be happy again and will have to run away from home and never have friends or family or food because the video game is evil and nothing ever helps you, press △OX.
posted by Scattercat at 5:30 PM on January 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


People still have home phones?


It makes a lot of sense if a) people without a personal phone live there or b) multiple people live there and sometimes you just want to talk to someone who is in the house right now, doesn't matter who.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 5:36 PM on January 5, 2019


People still have home phones?

Probably around 40% do. And it matters to telemarketers because it means more income.
posted by Brian B. at 5:37 PM on January 5, 2019 [3 favorites]


If you would like Mommy, press 1. If you would like Daddy, please press 2, hold the line until Daddy picks up, and then ask for Mommy.
posted by phooky at 5:47 PM on January 5, 2019 [31 favorites]


Where did y'all make the landline assumption? The article works fine if you assume the toddler steals a caregiver's mobile phone.

If we're going to be literal, the article doesn't give the phone number for the hotline, so how is the toddler going to know how to get a voice on the other end to give the written prompts? Toddler Feelings Hotline could just as well be the name of an app.

Anyway, it's hilarious and I forwarded it.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 5:53 PM on January 5, 2019 [3 favorites]


— If you’ve come to the halting realization that every single aspect of your life is decided by another person and that you truly have no agency over your own thoughts or existence, please remove all of your clothing and flee screaming in the direction of your nearest judgmental neighbor.

Initially I missed that this was for toddlers and now my neighbour won’t take my parcels anymore.
posted by billiebee at 5:53 PM on January 5, 2019 [38 favorites]


This is highly inaccurate because none of the options was to primal scream into the phone without stopping to breathe for a length of time that seems impossible by the laws of physics due to relative body and lung size.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:32 PM on January 5, 2019 [15 favorites]


Please weep piteously and press any number you want if you regularly have to deal with automated voicemail systems, even in 2019, even when using your current-gen smartphone
posted by trunk muffins at 7:25 PM on January 5, 2019 [8 favorites]


If you are wondering "why?" please say "why?" at any time.*

* Toddler Help is $1.99 per minute for the first 10 minutes; it is then $9.99 per minute until your phone's battery is drained.
posted by maxwelton at 7:29 PM on January 5, 2019 [10 favorites]


If you are irrationally afraid of voices on the phone, but also really really want to mash the keys on the phone, clutch your mother while she tries to do dishes. Please wail for fourteen minutes and pull her shirt out of shape. When that's died down to the occasional heaving sigh and sniffle, begin again if she tries to move. Feel free to abandon this posture immediately when silly daddy comes home from work because playing Fish School on his phone is completely different.
posted by peagood at 8:14 PM on January 5, 2019 [10 favorites]


People still have home phones?

We old farts do, yes.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 10:11 PM on January 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think about the Velveteen Rabbit at least once a month and now I need an adult and a blankie again.
posted by grette at 10:36 PM on January 5, 2019 [4 favorites]


We old farts do, yes.

Mainly because we prefer knowing that the other person is hearing what comes out of our mouth as opposed to whatever is going on in some random spot halfway back to our ear, and would rather be holding onto a $15 chunk of plastic ergonomically shaped for the purpose than juggling a demonically slippery $600 glass rectangle that is in any case going to drop the call halfway if we happen to have forgotten to put it on charge the night before.

The number of people I meet who seem to have forgotten that using a telephone to make a phone call was an objectively less unpleasant experience before the advent of the iPhone continues to astonish me.

(mashes 7)
posted by flabdablet at 5:07 AM on January 6, 2019 [20 favorites]


I don’t have a home phone because I don’t want to pay for separate service, but agree that a landline phone is a vastly superior phoning experience.
posted by jeoc at 6:07 AM on January 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


but agree that a landline phone is a vastly superior phoning experience.
posted by jeoc at 6:07 AM on January 6 [+] [!]


jeoc: not in lower Manhattan in NYC since 9/11. Landline calls (not recently, 'cause I haven't tried,) but whatever they did to restore service sucked.
posted by pjmoy at 7:52 AM on January 6, 2019


Mainly because we prefer knowing that the other person is hearing what comes out of our mouth as opposed to whatever is going on in some random spot halfway back to our ear, and would rather be holding onto a $15 chunk of plastic ergonomically shaped for the purpose than juggling a demonically slippery $600 glass rectangle that is in any case going to drop the call halfway if we happen to have forgotten to put it on charge the night before.

The number of people I meet who seem to have forgotten that using a telephone to make a phone call was an objectively less unpleasant experience before the advent of the iPhone continues to astonish me.


Well the number of people I meet who don't know these exist astonishes me so there.
posted by saysthis at 12:26 PM on January 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think about the Velveteen Rabbit at least once a month and now I need an adult and a blankie again.

I have an audiobook narration of this story that I've listened to with the kids a gajillion times. So when one of them gets their hands on the book, reading it to them should be a cakewalk, right? Nope X.{
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:54 PM on January 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


the number of people I meet who don't know these exist astonishes me so there

That fancy looking handset is all very well but what I want to know is, where is the magneto handle to crank for making the bells ring, and where is the cradle to rattle furiously while shouting OPERATOR! OPERATOR!?

All you whippersnappers have forgotten what proper telephones are supposed to look like.
posted by flabdablet at 5:57 AM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think about the Velveteen Rabbit at least once a month and now I need an adult and a blankie again.

What I want to know is, who reads the Velveteen Rabbit to a toddler?? I've got my old copy waiting for my kid to be old enough for it, but even at 5.5 years old he is definitely not there yet.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 2:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


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