I was on my way to
work this morning when I realized I forgot my cell phone. I feel so naked. It hasn’t always been this way.
Nowadays, cell
phones are ubiquitous. That hasn’t
always been the case. I grew up in the
era when phones were attached to a wall in the living room or kitchen or sat on
a small table. Most homes in my town had
but one phone. There was a cord that limited
your movement. In my house, you had to stand
during your conversation. If you were having
a long conversation, you may pause a moment and move a chair closer in order to
sit. It was a happy day when dad bought
an extension cord that allowed us to sit in the chair or couch in the living
room.
Speed dial? That depended on how quickly you could spin
your finger around the dial when placing a call. You hoped the number you called had low
numbers. 7, 8, 9 and 0 took forever when
you were in a hurry. There was no redial
on our rotary phone. There was a dial
and you were the redialer. Why would you
redial? No one answered or you got a
busy signal. There was a time if you
called someone who was on the phone, you heard a beeping tone which indicated
the other line was off the hook. Yes,
off the hook actually meant the part of the phone you held to your head wasn’t
resting on the mechanism that allowed inbound calls.
Call waiting started
when I was in high school, but few had it.
It cost extra and most considered it a luxury that wasn’t need. That was like having a microwave. (I’ll have to write some time about my mom
getting her first microwave.) Speaking
of costs, only local calls were free.
You paid by the minute for long distance calls. Therefore, calls to family, who lived in
Michigan, were limited to special occasions and emergencies.
I remember the
first time I had to call someone. I don’t
recall who it was or the reason for but I was quite nervous. I was, perhaps, 6 or 7 years old. Excitement filled me when the call was
complete. I also remember Community Bank
in Canton had a phone number to get the time and temperature. I would call that number multiple times to
hear the temps go up during the day.
It was a few years
into my working life when cell phones first came out. They were much bigger then. They reminded me of some radios soldiers used
in the Vietnam conflict. I had a
coworker who had a “car phone.” The voice
mail on his car phone said something like “I’m not out right now. I’m in.
Leave a message.”
Still, it was many
more years before I actually used a cell phone.
I had a job at a hotel that housed airlines crews during layovers. I was driving a crew to the airport when the
hotel called me. I had to ask one of the
flight crew members to answer it for me.
I didn’t know how to answer it.
Times have changed they
continue to accelerate. Looking back, I feel
like I am an archaic man talking about horse and buggy days. I will survive this day without my phone. Not having my phone gives me time to
write.
