Laundry room. Come in, laundry room.

When my wife's phone pings, alerting her to a text, I feel the need to say "It's not me," even though I'm in the same room. Unless it is me, and I'm texting her in secret for some reason, like not wanting to wake the dog(s) at her feet.

We text each other within the house a lot more than I would have ever expected. Mainly it's because my office is upstairs and hers is down, so vital messages like "What's for lunch?" and "Whatever you're making!" need to be transmitted in an efficient manner.

All this got me thinking about that wave of the future that I remember from childhood -- the in-home intercom. Many of my friends' homes had them. You kids may not have seen them, or perhaps you have, because they were built right into the walls and thus their removal would leave a huge hole.

They all looked like this, right down to the paneling.

These tended to be in houses built in the early- to mid-1960s. The house I grew up in was older than that, so we didn't have them. They seemed to me like real science fiction technology -- the idea that you could call Dad in the basement or your big sister in her room without getting up was amazing. "Sis! Your stupid boyfriend is on the stupid phone again!" Mom could call from wherever she was (the kitchen) to wherever you were (in front of the TV) without screaming. Some of them even had radios, so you could tune in the ball game or some groovy music at will. So futuristic.

In every house I knew of where these things were installed, though, they had ceased to function. I don't recall ever seeing one used, but I do recall people telling me they didn't work. These things were, of course, hardwired, so there's no reason I can tell you why they would malfunction anymore than the electrical socket would suddenly stop working. I guess the units just broke. But their importance in daily family life is demonstrated to me by the fact that no ever bothered to have the system fixed.

What the hell, Mom can always scream, right? She could shatter glass with that voice.

NuTone was the company that made most of these. Invisible Themepark has a nice summary of the history of the home intercom, although I think they're mistaken in saying this was only a feature of rich people's homes. I remember some developments that had been chucked up in the 1960s, the kind of home Rodney Dangerfield lived in in Easy Money, that had intercoms. Tiny backyards, but intercoms. The moms yelled anyway.

What absolutely stunned me is that NuTone is not only still with us, but they still make home intercoms. And not only that, but they're still wired into the wall. In fact, if you have the old wiring from an old system, they can have new units attached to it. I might have thought they'd do the system wirelessly now, but I guess that'd be just another phone. Or a non-walkie talkie.

As appealing as the idea is, I think I'll pass. After all, if I wanted to alert my wife, I'd have to get off the sofa, walk to the unit, call for her, wait for her to get away from the desk (disturbing Nipper and Tralfaz, sleeping on her feet), and answer the call. Easier to text.

Or yell. Yelling works.