I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

It's probably happened to you before. Your phone rings, and when you pick it up and say hi or

what's up, there's no one there to greet you. Instead, you hear muffled talking or ambient sounds

in the background, traffic or music or television.

Ah, you realize, this person didn't mean to call me.

It's a strangely intimate thing, the pocket dial.

When we are on the receiving end, we find ourselves listening from a tucked away place

close to someone's body. It's a pitfall of carrying our devices with us. Previous generations,

generations who grew up without cell phones, didn't have to contend with things

like pocket dials. When it happens to me, I scramble to hang up right away. I'm essentially

eavesdropping without trying, and I'd hate to overhear something I shouldn't.

The other person doesn't even realize I'm listening.

It's a perfect setup for an embarrassing disaster.

On the other hand, as today's poem shows us,

a pocket dial might also offer us a tender look at and a tender listen into life without our presence.

Pocket Dial by James Davis May

After My Three Helloos go unanswered, and I hear plate clatter and cutlery chimes, while a waiter

catalogs the specials of a restaurant somewhere in Pittsburgh, I know I'm in my father's blazer,

nestled near his heart,

where he keeps his phone,

and see him at the table with my mother,

ear angled toward the server,

...