"DATE OF BIRTH?"

“A time to be born, and a time to die;” (from Ecclesiastes 3:2)

At the telephone answering service job I where I currently work, at least ninety percent of our clients are doctor’s offices. When I take a message, either for the doctor’s office, or to page a doctor, most of the time the “field” on my computer screen requires me to ask the caller a series of questions. One of those questions is usually “date of birth?”.

After over five months of taking messages and asking questions, I’ve gotten to the point that I could probably guess the caller’s year of birth (within four years, either way) just by hearing their voice. That thought of that has really STRUCK me lately. Why do we age, not only PHYSICALLY, but also mentally, neruologically, and socially? Well, I know we ALL age, but it seems these patterns are SO deep seated....SO “programmed” as it were. Callers born in the 1980s and very early 1990s typically sound very “together”. Even if the caller is depressed and calling for a mental health professional, they STILL usually sound “together”! People from around ages eighteen to thirty seem to have no problem answering rapid fire questions and comprehending what you’re saying to them. That’s all only slightly less true of people born in the 1970s and 1960s. They may be more comfortable with you just speaking SLIGHTLY slower, but they’re a lot like the younger folks; actually they’re kind of a somewhat more mature version of them.

I was born in 1954, and I hate to admit this, but callers born in the 1950s, especially the early 1950s DO get a slight “older person” way of talking and communicating on the phone. I ABSOLUTELY notice it. One caller said, “I’m not as YOUNG as YOU are!” In fact, she was born in 1956! When I talk to people born in the 1950s I feel like I’m talking to a people in their late 50s and early 60s who have graying hair, grown children, and young grandchildren. I CAN’T BELIEVE these folks are my peers...but they are. Listen, getting off the phone after speaking to someone born in, say 1952, who definitely is getting that “older person” sound is kind of depressing!

I hope my older friends won’t want to shoot me, and there certainly ARE exceptions to these stereotypes, but callers born in the 1940s absolutely sound old and talk slow. Slowly and methodically such a caller will say something like, “I have an appointment with Doctor; well, wait a minute I can’t remember his name.” You’ll ask “Date of Birth” and get something like “6/5/42” for an answer.

Now, if you get a caller born in the 1920s, you’re probably going to be in for a challenge, as they typically can’t hear you (and I have a strong, penetrating voice) and trying to explain to them that they’ve reached an answering service and the doctor’s office will call them back is like trying to explain how to use the MassPike FastLane pass to someone in rural Haiti!

One thing we page doctors and nurse practitioners about a lot is nursing homes calling to report on a change of a patient. A few weeks ago, I asked the nurse calling from a nursing home the patient’s date of birth. It ended in “sixteen”.

“SIXTEEN?!” I replied.

“Yeah, sixteen” the nurse repeated, and in response to “reason for call” she replied, “I’m reporting the patient expired.”

I took a similar call this week from a nursing home where the patient’s date of birth ended in “twelve”. That’s 1912. It was about hospice reporting the pt. is in final stages.

Yeah, there are all the calls from parents who have kids with ear infections, and the dates of birth ending in “07, 08, and 09” and then there are those other calls. I speak to a whole cross section of humanity, and again, after several months of this I can easily pick out an age group.

There’s a lot that the Lord is “speaking” to me through this job. One thing I’m really being impressed with is how fast life goes by, how there’s really nothing we can do about getting older, and how important it is to be prepared to meet the Lord when the time comes that we “expire”.