I Was Thinking... Call Me

I remember when relatives had been visiting and as they were about to leave, my aunt would tell my mother, drop me a line. To those of you as old as I am, that might make sense, but to anyone younger, it was probably lost in translation. What my aunt was telling my mother was to write her a letter sometime. At one time, that was actually an accepted form of communication. While we had telephones, my aunt lived in Madison and that was long distance. Still another term that is foreign to most young people. (even my spell check didn’t recognize it and highlighted “long distance” as an error). Modern means of communication have changed tremendously and have made a lot of terms I grew up with outdated.
The first telephone I ever remember in our house did not even have a dial. To call someone you picked it up and told the operator who you wanted to call. Even as a four-year-old, I could negotiate the process and successfully call a neighbor lady while my mom was out hanging up clothes. To answer the phone, you also had to know your ring. Since we were on a party line, everyone had a separate ring. Since you shared the line with others, you also had to wait until someone else was done before you could make a call. Privacy was also at a minimum since anyone on the party line could pick up and hear your conversation. Eventually technology advanced and we dialed the number we wanted. Those rotary black phones were hooked to wires in the wall, so it was difficult for teenagers to get privacy when talking to a girlfriend or boyfriend. My sister found the cord on ours was just long enough to reach the stairs so she could shut the door for a little privacy. But if she was on the phone too long, my dad would pound on the door and tell her to hang up the phone.
Young girls were always told to have a dime in their purse in case they needed to find a pay phone to make an emergency call. There were an abundance of them in most public places. For privacy you might look for a phone booth, as long as Superman wasn’t using it to change.
Most phone companies limited the range of our calling area. We could call everyone in our local community and one larger town eight miles away but not the town across the river from them because that was in Michigan. Everything else was long distance. When I was in college and always short on funds, I would make a “collect call” home or ask to reverse the charges. Another trick many college students used to let their parents know they had made it back to college, was to call person to person and ask for themselves. Needless to say, most of the words I’ve bolded would make no sense to anyone under 25.
The phones of today are a far cry from what I grew up with. Some of my generation still refuse to get a cell phone or have had one forced upon them. Yet others have become as attached to them as the younger set. For many, they have become almost an extension of the person. Some feel almost naked if they don’t have their phones with them. Now many schools struggle to keep them out of the classrooms. At large gatherings like plays, church services, or even funerals, people are asked to turn off their phones. Today people complain because they don’t have enough bars, their phone needs charging, or they have dropped calls. But one problem we never encountered in the old days was trying to remember where we put our phone.
 
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