There is a bank of deserted telephone booths in a small town in northern Minnesota and every time I drive by, it makes me feel just a little bit nostalgic. At one time, phone booths were everywhere and then almost overnight, cell phones made them irrelevant. Practically everyone now carries their own phone in their purse or pocket and I realize that my grandchildren will never know the simple pains and pleasures of a life with one shared house phone that hung on the wall or sat on the counter. I'm sure many of you remember what it was like. Everyone in the house had to wait their turn to make a call, or were constantly being scolded to "get off that phone", and would race whenever it rang to have the honor of answering it..."I'll get it! I'll get it!" To my grandkids, these stories will sound as unbelievable as the stories we heard from our own parents and grandparents about walking to school over a mile, up hill both ways, in snow up to their waists, with nothing but a hot potato in their pocket to keep them warm...and then they would have to eat that potato for lunch. (Or at least, that's the story my dad always told me.) To be honest, I think I and my peers will likely be the last generation to even have a phone in their house - my younger nieces and nephews do not, neither do my daughters. Yet, for those of us who grew up with a landline, we are resistant to let it go - whether it is due to a sense of security (what if all the cell networks stop working?), or simply holding onto something from the past.
Anyway, I was thinking about this as I drove by these deserted phone booths last weekend and remembered a time when I needed to make a call, and because there were no cell phones in 1982, I had to use a phone booth. My friend, Janice, and I had taken the day off from school to tour a business college in Minneapolis. She drove and, as will likely happen to a couple teenagers girls from the suburbs, we quickly got lost in the city and had no idea where to go. We finally saw a phone booth and Janice pulled over so I could call my dad for directions. I dropped in my dime (kids, that's what dimes were originally created for...to make calls from phone booths....and to find under your pillow from the tooth fairy...I have no idea what dimes are used for now) and called my dad's office. I told him we were lost and asked him where we should go. He asked me to look around for a street sign and tell him where I was which I did. And this is what he told me..."Theresa, it doesn't matter where you go, just get out of there." (Apparently, we weren't in the nicest part of the city.) And that's what we did.
Anyway, there's really no point to my entry today. Just sharing a memory and a moment of nostalgia with those of us who used to share the same phone. And also a very belated apology to my sister who I completely humiliated in 1978 by answering the phone when her boyfriend called and telling him she couldn't come to the phone because she was in the bathroom. That was another problem with sharing a phone...overly honest siblings.
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