OCR Text |
Show Kids Sob Who Stole My Batline? By TOM CLOYD It's a dull evening at home, with Mom and Dad glued to the boob-tube, boob-tube, and you're too young to drink, so what's to do? Of course, that's it, dial the Batline. THE WHAT? Look at your tele, phone and dial the letters B-a-t-1-i-n-e-. It won't do you any good now, but formerly a busy signal would result, and if you listened very carefully you could hear kids voices in the background, distantly shouting to each other between the beeps. The result would be the same if you dialed your own number. num-ber. The whole point of this is to exchange telephone numbers with some unknown of the fair sex, then hang up, and call her. The watchword watch-word of the batliners is "IS THERE ANYBODY ON THE LINE? shouted at the top of your voice so as to be heard over half a dozen other people peo-ple bellowing various other civili. ties such as "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" and "ARE YOU A BOY OR GIRL?" THE UNIVERSITY has especially especial-ly been plagued by these beep-liners, beep-liners, as they are also called, so much so that the telephone company com-pany has had to initiate a change in the character of the busy signal for all University numbers. No longer is it just a polite beep-beep; now it sounds like an air-raid warning: warn-ing: a constant, high-pitched wail over which nothing may be heard. Eileen Wight, Chief Operator at the University switchboard, commented com-mented that since the change has occurred, "to discourage children from playing on the telephone," the switchboard has been swamped with people complaining that something's the matter with their phone. Before this they called frequently frequent-ly to complain that "batliners" were tying up a line and preventing prevent-ing their call from going thru. |