Oooh... a sexy girl with slender fingers holding a shiny silver pen, then, once she finishes dialing rests the tip of the pin against her red, pouty bottom lip....
I'll be back in five minutes.
Okay, okay... a minute and a half.
Wow. I just got a busy signal!
- Thread starter TheSeeker
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Oooh... a sexy girl with slender fingers holding a shiny silver pen, then, once she finishes dialing rests the tip of the pin against her red, pouty bottom lip....
I'll be back in five minutes.
Okay, okay... a minute and a half.
Ah, the things we've lost...
Smart aleck!
Sounds like a cool guy.
Oh, I hate those early technology adopter geeks!
Nice! 
Uh, have you been really lonely lately?
I remember when telephone numbers had exchange prefixes: STate, DIckens, RIchmond, HOllywood, etc. In the early 1960s, when I was seven years old, our phone number changed from STate 4-XXXX to 784-XXXX. I was a little slow to realize it was still the same number.
And when's the last time anyone said, "Quiet -- I'm on long distance!" Meaning a long-distance call was IMPORTANT.
And expensive.
In the early '90s my parents had Prodigy Internet service, and the only number in our area was long distance, so it was the kind of thing we only used for a couple hours a month. I remember trying to make the most of the 30 minutes my parents gave me to use it each month.
We had an anonymous call one time from some kid that was apparently dialing four letter words and was telling people the last four digits of their phone number could be represented by the word "____". Before anyone jumps to any conclusion, our word wasn't anything most people would consider offensive (like "work" ;-) or even on a certain comedian's list of words you can't say on the radio.
Even then some people had too much time on their hands.
Even then some people had too much time on their hands.
Same with my mom. I live 1000 miles away. She's in her 80's. No answering machine. No call-waiting. I can go an hour getting signals while trying to call her. Or wait all afternoon to get ahold of her just to leave a message because she was out buying groceries.
Every time I suggest she get an answering machine or at least call-waiting, she just blows it off. Hell, she just got her first cordless phone about two years ago. Getting her to do that was an adventure. She has a cell phone, but never turns it on.
Another thing or two:
Does anyone here remember when you didn't actually own your phone? It came from the phone company, and you essentially leased it from them. At least in the 1960s and early 1970's, that's the way it was where I grew up.
Party lines?
Phones without even a rotary dial, because when you picked up, an operator answered to place your call?
It was that way in Germany for a looong time, up until the mid-80's I think. My grandparent's didn't replace their old dial plate telephones (with a sign underneath that read "property of Deutsche Bundespost" or something to that effect) before the late 90's.
Ah, my parents' phone is still attached to the wall. They tried to go cordless for a while, but kept forgetting to put it back, so the battery always died, so they went back to a phone with a cord.
They also have an answering machine, but it doesn't pick up if they're on another call.
Yup, I remember not owning the phone. And vaguely remember that we had a party line when I was very little.
Ah, the days before the breakup of AT&T, when the phone company was THE phone company -- colloquially known as Ma Bell. It was a regulated monopoly, but on the whole it worked pretty well.
Those were pretty much a thing of the past when I was growing up, except for some business and hotels that had their own internal PBX system. That was when operators still sat at switchboards with jacks and cables.
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