Telephone Evolution

Remember the days of rotary dial phones? (Those of you under the age of 30 can stop reading now). Remember a time before answering machines, when businesses had to hire and ANSWERING SERVICE staffed with REAL PEOPLE that answered the phone for them when no one was in the office.

Remember when cell phones cost about $2,000 JUST FOR THE PHONE? They were about the size of the bag that that military aide to the U.S. President carries the nuclear launch codes in. Usually they were only mounted in a car. My friend's dad had one of the first ones. Every time the phone rang, the horn on the car honked continuously until he answered it.

But I digress.

When my family first moved out in the country from “in town,” we had a party line with three other houses – and, you guessed it; ROTARY DIAL PHONES. No cordless phones for us. No way. Too fancy. Too expensive.

It's funny how communications have evolved. Now we won't even leave a message on the voicemail of our best friend's cell phone. We're too impatient. Why do we even have voice mail greetings? No one will even leave a message! So what do we do? WE TEXT MESSAGE THEM. That'll get their attention for sure...

Texting. This is the gift of the generation who doesn't even know what a typewriter looks like. They didn't take “typing” in school, they took “keyboarding” on a computer. They barely know what Liquid Paper is. I didn't even SEE a computer in school until I was a Junior in High School. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80. That you had to program in BASIC. That's all it did. Run one program and store the information. On a tape recorder.

If we told everyone under 40 years old that they couldn't use their thumbs for 24 hours, all communications would probably cease because people couldn't text, and there would probably be mass suicides among video gamers.

So, hey, if you want to blow someone's mind, call them on their home phone line from a pay phone (if you can find one), and when they don't answer and the voice mail comes on, leave a lengthy message and tell them it was great to go back in time with them.