I started thinking about all the things future generations will never get to experience. And a lot of them had to do with phones...
- Kids will never know the fear of calling a crush, or even a friend, and having a parent answer. "Hello Mrs. Carnes, can Matt come to the phone?" And that was if you even get through. There was no call waiting, just a seemingly endless busy signal.
- If they weren't home hopefully they had an answering machine. Not voicemail. You had about 30 seconds to stammer out your message onto a little tape. Which would probably be heard by the entire family IF the tape didn't break. And if you had to record that outgoing message it haunted you. You'd call home, hear your voice. You'd ignore a call, you'd hear your voice. And you always sounded like shit. Or you could do this...
- If they were home you probably had one phone in the house, maybe 2. So chances are you were trying to hold a private call while in the kitchen with pain in the ass siblings making kissy noises around you. They had cords, so you couldn't go far. I remember just walking around and around in circles because I couldn't go any farther. And then it would get tangled.
- Heavy breathing. Enough said.
- Crank calls will never been the same. Sure, you can set your phone to "private" but it's not the same thing. I remember setting up a 3-way call between 2 friends, while we listened in the 3rd line. They kept thinking the other called them.
- You could ask the operator for an emergency break through. If the line you were calling was busy you could call the operator and ask them to cut into their call.
- Phonebooks! They served many purposes. You could find your friend's number, you could locate a local garage, or you could sit on it like a booster seat. Everyone had one. You had to remember phone numbers, some I remember to this day.
- Pay phones were everywhere. I used to have to check in with my parents when I was out, and had to call from the public phones (which sometimes were really nasty). And kids will never know the joy of finding change in the coin slot.
- Beepers were the stupidest things (I know, pagers). Someone would send you a message that consisted of a phone number, no name. Then you had to find a phone to call them back. Absolutely ridiculous.
- If you wanted to go online you had dial up Internet. The noise that it made still haunts me. You had to make sure nobody was using the phone, and hope nobody picked it up while you were online. Because if that connection was cut you had to start over again
- No caller ID, no problem. We had *69.
- Collect calls were used for more than calls from prison. If you had no change for the pay phone you could make a collect call. You'd record your name, and it would dial the other party. Sometimes instead of saying my name I'd say whatever I was calling to say (himomI'matthemoviesI'llcallwhenit'sover).
- Rotary phones were always a pain. It took longer to call 9-1-1 than 4-1-1, which never made sense to me.
- 1-900 phone numbers. Not just for psychics, chat lines and sexy women waiting for you to call. My sister got in trouble for calling this one.
- I taught myself how to play songs on the phone keys. I did a kick-ass version of "Hey Hey We're The Monkees".
