The latter made me laugh and I looked at Bee and said, "Isn't it funny that our kids will never be able to use that excuse?" Think about it. I'm 32 years old. I am the last generation who really has a firm grasp on what a payphone is. Probably the last generation to use one on a regular basis. My friend's daughter who is slightly younger than Little man actually asked her what in the world exactly was a payphone?
That got me thinking...what else will our kids never get to experience? I made a list of the ones that came to my mind and really, it boggles my mind to think about some of this stuff. Especially since they were all a huge part of my life growing up.
- Payphones- There was one on every corner. Every business, restaurant, bus station, gas station, bowling alley, bar, and grocery store had one. If not, you paid an employee a quarter to use their office phone. I remember when phone calls were 10 cents as well as 25 cents. My dad never let me leave the house without $0.50
- Calling Collect- in the rare chance you didn't have a quarter, Or you were calling long distance, but didn't want/couldn't pay the charges, you could call 1-800-Collect and place a collect call. Or 1-800-ATTCollect. Sometimes, we would just say "ComePickMeUp" when it asked your name, then hang up. It was free that way.
- Long Distance- My kids actually asked what that was. FACEPALM. I remember when Ohio got overloaded with new phone numbers and a new area code had to be added. Calling some of my friends because Long Distance because it was outside my area code. OH THE HORROR!
- Busy Signal- this is a foreign concept today. Everyone has call waiting standard. I remember getting soo pissed because I was waiting for a call and my mom was on the phone with her sister. I also remember getting in trouble because I was on the phone with my friends and my mom was trying to call me.
- Sharing a land line - We all used one phone. It didn't text, nor did it have unlimited ring tones. Caller ID was new and only fancy people had it. Also, you had to share the phone.
- Pagers- Beepers. I fought and fought my parents on letting me have one. My dad said they were only for doctors and drug dealers even though he had one (for work) and he was neither. I finally gone one at 15 and it was so.cool. I had lots of different cases for it. I looked cool. Later, I paid the up charge and had voice mail on it. Awesome, until I realized that I had to pay .25 to call my voicemail and see who paged me, and then another .25 to call the person back if I wasn't at home and I rarely had that extra change because I needed every available dime to buy Cigarettes, which were $1.43 a pack...
- Gas- was .75 cents a gallon when I started driving. When it was approaching $2.00 a gallon, we would drive across town to fill up at a station we found to regularly have gas at $1.50.
- Dial-up- I used to use an early form of the internet called FreeNet. You had to dial in. Most of the time they were always busy. You had to dial and dial, and dial, and dial, and then eventually, you would get in...but you only got an hour...and then you had to relog. Sometimes, on a Saturday night, you could wait 3 hours before getting in.
- "Please get off the computer, I need to use the phone" - or even worse, being in the middle of a conversation with someone online and have your dad pick up the phone because he needs it, kicking you off the intertubes....
That's all I can think of for the time being...Any one have any they want to add?? :)
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