I hate phones too, and ironically, I worked in the telecom industry for 25 years on telephone software -- things like call forwarding, call waiting, and all those "fun" things that phones can do now that they couldn't do many years ago.

Of the gals I worked with, most of us hated phones! Very strange. But yes, they are intrusive. Before email came along, they were much more necessary than today. I thank the computer gods for inventing email. And I thank the mobile phone gods for inventing texting. Anything to avoid an actual call!

This is one thing I love about Belize. Texting is pretty popular, but other than that people just don't use phones all that much. The only calls we ever get are either wrong numbers or notification that we have a package at the tiny airport cargo area. That's pretty much it. We make a call maybe once every two weeks to inquire about a package, make an appointment, or something. I have never made nor received a "social" call here. Everyone here communicates primarily on Facebook, it seems, to set up meetings, meals together, etc.