“Reach out and touch someone.”
Anyone else remember those long distance commercials? Sometimes I freak out just a little when I think about how some things in my life — totally NORMAL THINGS, dammit — sound like Little House on the Prairie days to my now young-adult kids. Phones fall squarely under this category.
Paying by the minute to call people. The fact that one wrong button pushed could be the difference between a reasonable evening chat and a long distance bill that would land you on restrictions when your dad opened it. The concept that marketing would be designed to encourage phone calls, because what do you mean people didn’t yap all day and night on the phone in the ’70s? The fact that it used to be the norm to be out of touch and it took a real effort to keep in contact with people who didn’t live in your day to day sphere.
The more I talk about this the more I realize it sounds a bit like communication among the colonies or how messages were passed along while traveling the Oregon Trail.
I am clearly a million years old. Time to dissolve into dust as the younguns pass at the speed of light.
Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “distance.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Riddle from the Middle 
LOL, I remember those days! Gone are landlines in every home, phone booths on the corner, and the princess phone was at home, not in our purse or pocket. Yup, I have to be careful when I talk to “kids” who are in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s so they don’t have that “what in the heck are you talking about” look on their faces.
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Phone booths on the corner!! Bwahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!!
When I told my kids about using a quarter to call my parents from the pay phone in the skating rink for a ride home they looked at me aghast. And the time one of them was supposed to call the tire place to check status and they said “it won’t go through, it keeps making this weird sound” AND IT WAS A BUSY SIGNAL…
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If you are a million, I’m a billion. I’m amazed at how fast stuff moves these days. Even an old fart like me has an AI assistant. Good thing too. Would never be able to stay up with change without it. (The whole idea of an AI assistant for a soon to be 85 year old , tells us something.)
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It surely does. Helping my husband’s mom navigate her phone is a whole thing so you managing an AI assistant is serious tech savvy.
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And waiting until Sunday night to call home because the rates were so much less. Kids must think we had that wall phone in a cave.
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Right?? Those were the dark ages. Everyone in college was supposed to call their parents for the check in on Sundays…I honestly don’t know that I ever connected that was due to the rates.
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😉
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🙂
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Ooh the 1900s sure makes it sound like we lived in the olden frontier days! Yep, I remember phones and having ‘party lines’, those shared lines with strangers! 🙂
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When the youngsters started calling it this I laughed and laughed then promptly felt ancient. 🤣 The house we live in was built in 2005(ish) and there’s a phone jack in the kitchen. We moved in & I was like should we get a house phone?? Hadn’t thought about that in years.
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