I love answering questions about the “olden days.”
“Dad, in the ‘olden days,’ was everything in black and white, or just the TVs?”
“No, everything was in color, including the TVs.”
“In what grade were you in when you got your first computer?”
“17th.” “Huh?” Then this one, which seemed to shock my youngest son when he asked a while back.
“Dad, when did you get your first cell phone?”
“My first cell phone? Hmm,” I wondered aloud. “I think I got my first cell phone well over 25 years ago. It was in the late ‘90s.”
“Wha? Why, why didn’t your parents buy you a cell phone when you were in high school, in college, wh- what did you do? Were you in trouble and they punished you by taking away your cell phone?”
At this point, his astonishment ran down to his fingers, and he began texting something to someone about his father growing up in a cave.
“Well, we didn’t have cell phones when I was a teenager, and I don’t remember anyone having one when I was in college,” I explained. “I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was out of college, maybe in my late 20s or early 30s.”
“How, what, how, what, did you do when you needed to call someone?”
“I went to a regular land-line phone and called them.”
“What’s a land-line phone? Are you making up stuff again?”
His cynicism is justified. I have, at some point, told my children that I fought in the Spanish-American War, invented Pringles, was Samuel L. Jackson’s roommate in college, and was a member of the cast of the blockbuster motion picture “E.T.,” playing “E.T.” They later found out I was fibbing on almost all accounts.
“No, a land-line is a phone that you have at your house that plugs into a wall. You know, like the one we have now and never use.”
“So, how did you call people from your car if you didn’t have a cell phone?”
“You didn’t,” I replied. “What? You mean, you didn’t take your phone in your car with you?”
“No, I mean I didn’t have a portable phone. No one did. You had a phone at your house and that was it. Or, you used a pay phone,” I explained.
“A pay phone? You mean, you had a cell phone, but it’s one where you pay for your minutes up front?”
He didn’t get it. “No, a pay phone is a land-line phone that’s in a booth,” I retorted.
“What’s a booth?”
“A phone booth is a glass-encased cubicle that had a phone in it, and you put a quarter in it if you had to make a phone call,” I said. “They had a pay phone booth on about every corner.”
I might as well have been explaining this in Cantonese.
“Wait, let me figure this out,” he said. “How did you make a phone call if you wanted to ask someone a question or tell them something? Did you just text them?” I laughed out loud.
“Text? No, there was no such thing as texting,” I said with a chortle. “If you wanted to talk to somebody, you waited until you got home or to a phone and then you called them. Or, if it was an emergency and you were on the road, you would stop and use one of the aforementioned phone booths, and you would put some money in the phone and you would call them. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” he replied, pausing to try to fathom the ways of ancient civilizations.
“Well, I guess, when you were young, you just had to wait if you wanted to talk to someone. You couldn’t just talk to them whenever you liked,” he reasoned.
“Precisely,” I agreed. “If you wanted to tell someone something,” he added, “you would have to find one of those land phones, or find a computer and email them.”
“Uh, huh,” I replied, giving up.
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@clinchcounty news
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