Reach out and touch someone

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When I was a child, calling long distance on the phone was an expensive luxury. As a matter of fact I can remember when you couldn't make the call yourself, you had to go through an operator to call long distance. Because talking long distance was so expensive, people rarely called unless it was an emergency. When "Dial 1" came along, the phone company had difficulty getting people to make long distance calls on their own. They had commercials on TV explaining first dial 1 (back then we didn't have push button phones, we had the rotary phones), then the area code and finally the 7 digit number. I remember one commercial where a young man calls his parents, long distance from college, his mother answers the phone and when he identifies himself, she immediately with concern in her voice, ask "whats wrong". The phone at the parents house was located in the kitchen which was common during that time and the father was sitting at the kitchen table. Hearing the concern in his wife's voice he jumps up and rushes to her side. The son says nothing is wrong, he just wanted to call and say hi and let them know he was thinking of them. The commercial closes with some chorus group singing "reach out and touch someone" in the back ground. Now days with our mobile phones with unlimited long distance, and our emails, and instant messaging, and twitter, and blogs, reaching out and touching someone or everyone isn't such a big deal. However, I sometimes think we have lost something in the ease of modern communications. The next time you reach out by phone, email, text, twitter or blog, be sure that the person or people you are reaching out to know your thinking of them and hold them dear to your heart. I'm Dad and I'm just saying.