Tales from way back when I was alive
Hey, remember how I told you about the good old days of television?
"ya. we didn't believe a word you said"
It was all true. Would I lie to you? Things were different back then.
"no kidding"
Like for instance, nobody had cell phones.
"nobody? how did you call each other, then?"
We used regular phones. You know, the kind that plugs into the wall. There weren't any cordless phones either. All the phones looked like this:
"dude. where are the buttons?"
No buttons. You turned the dial instead.
"that must have taken forever"
Not really. You only used an area code if you were calling out of state, which nobody ever did unless it was a real emergency, because it cost extra. So most of the time you only needed to dial 7 numbers.
"unless you were calling 911, of course"
Oh, there was no 911. If you needed the police or the fire department, you had to call the local number.
"ok, so your house is burning and you'd have to go online and look up the number for the fire department?"
Not quite. There were no computers either, remember?
"oh my lord. so you'd, like, stand there and burn or what?"
Well, you'd have to go to a neighbor's house, or look for a pay phone.
"i don't even want to ask"
There used to be pay phones at all the gas stations, and other random and usually unsafe locations. They looked like this:
"nice. it looks like you could get a disease from that thing. so what if you wanted to text somebody? how did that work?"
Oh, there was no texting.
"gasp"
No ring tones. No camera phones. No video phones. No phone games. No phone Internet. No phone GPS. All you could do with your phone, was make a phone call.
"you are so funny. i almost took you seriously for a minute there.
no camera phones! good one."
Yep, ha ha. I am such a kidder. No constant, instant, unavoidable 24-hour communication! Can you imagine? Who on earth would call THAT the "good old days"??
5 comments:
Oh, I remember that time, and watching The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night as if it were mandatory, and a family event.
I very rarely see public telephones anymore. There must be people who need to use them because their battery has run low or there are no bars!
And there was a time when people wrote letters ...
"You mean, like, a, b, c, d ...?"
No, I mean they took up a pen and wrote words on pieces of paper.
"What, you mean, voluntarily?"
Yes, even children used to. You know, for thank you letters.
"Run that by me again. Th - ank - you - lett - ers?"
Then they used to put the paper in an envelope and put a stamp on it, then walk to the postbox and put it in.
"My, you're tiring me out with this narrative. Did people never sleep?"
And your recipient would get the letter a couple of days later.
"Ha ha, ha ha. That's so funny. Let me tell you one I know about a man who walks into a bar."
Logistician: I know! Remember Topo Gigio? The little mouse? We loved him.
gaf: Yes, they seem to be gone - or there's an ugly case with a broken phone in it. Somebody needs to get rid of those!
Fran: hahaha - so true! And an "instant message" would have been those little folded-up notes that we passed to each other in class. (but not in YOUR class!)
No, in my classes, they text each other while looking straight ahead and pretending to be completely entranced by iambic pentameter ...
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