My friend's 14 year old daughter was STUNNED that back in the days we only had one phone per family

[LynneSin]

And usually it was in the Kitchen or some other common area. This is a kid that lives for texting. I mean she's smart enough to know that there were no cell phones back them but she was shocked that alot of families (including her mom) just had one phone. She was like "HOW DID YOU HAVE ANY PRIVACY WITH JUST ONE PHONE". I reminded her back then we really weren't doing anything that we'd get secret from our family.

Kids just don't appreciate how easy they have it these days.

[old mark]

1. Yeah, and it was a big thing that was actually owned by the phone company...

you had to pay a monthly fee to keep it.


mark

[LynneSin]

3. My grandparents had a party line

I was in a phase where I always wanted to answer the phone but I kept forgetting to listen to the distinct ring assigned to them.

[Maine-ah]

2. did you tell her about party lines?

or that you only had to dial 4 digits :)

[LynneSin]

4. OMG I'm not THAT odl

Although (as I mentioned above) my grandparents did have a party line.

[Maine-ah]

11. oh...oops, my bad

those were still around when I was a kid and I'm only 36 :)

[tigereye]

14. that would have been a revelation for this generation!

talk about no privacy! :rofl:

[Rosie1223]

5. I was lucky. The phone cord on the hall phone was long enough

to stretch into my room.

:hi:

[cutlassmama]

13. Mine too, yet me and my brother constant fought over it!

[csziggy]

39. You WERE lucky! Our single phone was also Dad's business phone

We were not allowed to answer the phone until we were able to take messages and reliably deliver them. With four daughters in the house, the rules about talking on the phone were strict - we could call out or receive calls in order to make arrangements to meet with friends, but absolutely no extended conversations on the phone. To this day Mom limits her calls to a couple of minutes from years of habit of not being able to talk for long.

[MorningGlow]

6. And you couldn't walk around with it

And it was heavy enough to use as a weapon. Not I speak from personal experience, mind.

[kentauros]

7. Dial M for Murder

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046912

}(

[WinkyDink]

62. "Dial"? :-)

Kids don't know from "dial," "drop a dime on someone," "Beechwood 4-5789," etc.!

[kentauros]

63. Of course it's questionable as to whether they'd ever even watch such a movie.

I mean, it's not even in color! There's no CGI! Where's the 3D!!! Oh, the horror... the horror.

:P

[WinkyDink]

81. And they wouldn't get your allusion, either. ;-)

Mr. Kurtz, he dead.

:-)

[kentauros]

97. A few people from that movie are dead.

Thankfully, the POTUS isn't! :P

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Our single big black phone was on a table next to the stairs.

Phones in those days (the '50s) were hard-wired into the wall. The phone company had to come out and install one when you moved into a new house.

When we moved a few years later we got an extension phone for my parents' bedroom. That was a big deal. The main phone hung on the wall in the kitchen, and the cord was long enough that I could shut myself in the broom closet to talk to my friends in private. But sometimes, if she thought I'd been yakking too long, my mom would cut off my call by pushing the cradle down. Or she'd pick up the extension and tell me it was time to hang up.

My grandma had a party line for years, well into the '70s. You could tell a call was for her if there were two short rings. Long rings meant it was for the other person on the line.

Cell phones have made it all too damn easy. And now if you'll excuse me I have to chase the kids off my lawn.

[May Hamm]

9. I tried to explain the concept of waiting for a boy to call

The other day my grandkids and I were talking about telephones and I tried to explain to them about dating and waiting for phone calls and how you couldn't go anywhere or even use the phone, you just had to sit home and wait for the phone to ring. They didn't get it. One, they couldn't imagine a life without call waiting. Two they couldn't imagine a life where a girl had to wait for a boy ask her out.

Times have changed so very much. Nice.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. No caller ID, no call waiting. So if some other family member was on the phone

and you were anxiously hoping for The Phone Call, you'd just pace around going crazy while the other person blabbed on the phone for what seemed like hours, because if someone was trying to call you all they'd get was a busy signal, since there was no such thing as voicemail, either. If it was a sibling who was monopolizing the phone you could bug them til they hung up, but if it was a parent all you could do was fidget and fret.

Not that anybody ever called me... But I kept hoping they would.

[Phentex]

29. LOL. Ah the good ole days...

The kids today would never believe it!

[tabbycat31]

38. that still happens in the era of cell phones

Ask me how I know :-)

[bookworm65t]

10. In my house we had only ONE television

and this was for a family of nine

[Bunny]

16. Me too.

And I had three older brothers, so they outnumbered me and I ended up having to watch horrible boy shows, like Star Trek, Wild Wild West, Bonanza, etc. x(

[Richardo]

40. ...

:D

[Bunny]

46. !!!

:spray: :rofl: Hey, when you're 8 years old, Hoss's sexy isn't obvious yet. Gotta be a little older to appreciate it. :D :hi: :loveya:

[texanwitch]

53. Hot, really hot.

I always did like Hoss's hat.

[tigereye]

15. 1 TV, 1 phone by the breakfast nook

I sat there yakking on the phone for hours, with my parents sitting at the dining room table. I guess my sister never got to use the phone! :rofl:

[Bunny]

18. We had one phone on the kitchen wall, and the cord was about a foot long.

You were pretty much trapped there when you were on the phone. I remember going to a friend's house and their kitchen phone had a really long cord - she could walk around all through the kitchen and even into the dining room. I was jealous. :D :hi: tigereye!

[tigereye]

68. hello- how was the ice this am? I bagged on some work

stuff since I'm a giant weenie about these things. At least the major blizzards seem to keep missing us. (keeps fingers crossed.) My kid's school finally decided that we could actually have a 2 hour delay today, but as usual they waited unitl 6 am. :eyes: They hate when the city or other SD's have delays or they have to make a decision the night before.

[LynneSin]

19. One TV 12 channels

My dad somehow managed to rig up the cable so we'd have it on both TVs therefore my mother refused to upgrade cable.

After I graduated and was on my own I couldn't afford cable so I used Rabbit Ears for about 10 years.

[Auggie]

31. You had 12 channels? We had 4...

For many years in Cleveland it was NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. When two UHF channels started broadcasting in the late 1960s it was a big deal.

[tigereye]

35. getting channel 9 in Steubenville was a big deal when I

was a kid. :rofl:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

65. But you probably had to get channel 9 because

that was the station that carried the Dean Martin Show, right? ;-)

[tigereye]

67. hmm, I have no idea!

:D


:hi: Hey how are ya?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

79. Looks like we're escaping the worst

this storm has to offer. How are things in your neck of the woods?

[tigereye]

80. some freezing rain this morning, not too bad

I think the big snow is supposed to miss us, and provide us with a big rain instead. Or so I hear- they keep changing their minds! :D

[GoddessOfGuinness]

86. I hope that's the case...

We really do need the precip around here.

[tigereye]

100. unlike so many other parts of the country!

It's actually 42 out there and it rained like hell last night.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

104. Here too! It was 50 degrees a little earlier...

but the wind has picked up, and the cold front is coming through. We'll be back in the 30s tomorrow.

[alphafemale]

85. My mother grew up in the same neighborhood as Dean Martin.

He was a few years older and she always said he was a bully.

:hi:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

87. I can picture that, somehow...

My parents used to watch his show religiously when I was a kid.

[alphafemale]

88. I missed some of the shows that everyone else watched we only got 2 for much of my childhood

Or sometimes one.

We got an aerial antenna with a clunkaclunk dial in the living room that let us get a few more when I was about 12 or so.

Channel 9 was the PBS station right?

[csziggy]

42. For most of my childhood it was 3 channels

CBS, NBC and WEDU (educational channel from University of South Florida, highly rated station long before PBS was invented) all in Tampa. If Dad climbed up on the roof and turned the antenna we could get the ABC channel from Orlando but only with a lot of static, so it was not worth it.

About 1964 a friend down the street got cable and all the kids would go over Saturdays to watch Art Grindal Science Fiction Theatre on the Orlando ABC station. Art Grindal sold used cars and had entertaining commercials - he was known for slashing prices by ripping the cardboard signs in half and all sorts of stunts. Once he jumped onto the roof of a car and the roof caved in. The commercials were done live so it was always fun to see what would happen that week.

When I moved to Tallahassee for college in 1972, there were TWO stations - CBS and PBS. Neither broadcast much after midnight. It was pitiful. Eventually someone started an ABC channel on UHF and years later an NBC affiliate, also on UHF.

[tigereye]

69. remember the sign-offs when stations went off the air?

There is no such thing now, is there? TV is always (frighteningly) on!

[May Hamm]

71. The National Anthem with the flag waving

Then the test pattern came on and the loud tone that meant "the end of the broadcast day..."

[csziggy]

101. Yes - now when there is no programming they sell infomercials

And keep sending out a signal.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

76. Art Grindle was a hoot!

We had Art Grindle commercials on Saturday morning during the Larry Kane Show.
We did not have American Bandstand and Dick Clark in Houston.

We had the Larry Kane Show.

Then at grandma's house in the country, with an antenna, we were trying to get American Bandstand on saturday morning. Grandma walks through and says, "You girls shouldn't be watching that Nigra music. You should watch Lawrence Welk." GAG.

We all laughed our asses off behind her back. :rofl:

I should have said, "Yeah, that Dick Clark dude, he's really, really black." :sarcasm:

[tigereye]

34. I think we only had 5? channels when I was a kid..

it was before color tv was omnipresent. :D

[LynneSin]

20. One TV 12 channels

My dad somehow managed to rig up the cable so we'd have it on both TVs therefore my mother refused to upgrade cable.

After I graduated and was on my own I couldn't afford cable so I used Rabbit Ears for about 10 years.

[kedrys]

17. Did you get into the whole rotary phone thing?

There's another puzzler for the young'uns... :rofl:

[texanwitch]

21. Also one bathroom.

Except on the farm my Grandfather kept the outhouse.

The little white house behind the big white house.

My Grandparents had a party line, their rings were one long and two short.

Good days, I was never one to talk on phone, still don't like to.

[Kaleva]

43. What?

[texanwitch]

22. Also one bathroom.

Except on the farm my Grandfather kept the outhouse.

The little white house behind the big white house.

My Grandparents had a party line, their rings were one long and two short.

Good days, I was never one to talk on phone, still don't like to.

[Kaleva]

44. Still didn't quite catch that.

[texanwitch]

23. Also one bathroom.

Except on the farm my Grandfather kept the outhouse.

The little white house behind the big white house.

My Grandparents had a party line, their rings were one long and two short.

Good days, I was never one to talk on phone, still don't like to.

[Kaleva]

45. Okay! Now I understand!

:D

[texanwitch]

49. Hey , watch it.

I will get Skittles on your ass.

:rofl:

[Capn Sunshine]

47. THAT WAS AWESOME RIGHT THERE

can we do it again mom?

[Pithlet]

24. My kids were appalled at one TV, with no cable or any type of recording device.

You had to watch whatever was on the meager local channels. No skipping the commercials. No popping in a movie if nothing was on. They think it must have been pretty rough, but I actually miss the odd sense of community in that you knew just about everyone who watched TV was pretty much watching the same thing. Hits were really hits in those days. My generation, just like a lot of people of a certain age or older can bond over tv shows many of us watched from our past. Our kids probably won't have that. Not everyone is into the same things anymore.

[ashling]

58. And you actually had to get up

and go across the room to change the channel.

Though I remember our first remote for the Zenith Color Tv. Whenever my dog would come by and shake his tags the channel would change. :rofl:

[LibDemAlways]

89. And if the tv was old, changing the channel was tricky. I remember having to

position the channel dial very carefully or major snow would appear on the screen. TV was technologically primitive by today's standards. Unfortunately, the programming quality hasn't advanced to any appreciable degree.

[tigereye]

70. yeah, there was a kind of bonding that kids today don't

have- however, I think they bond over youtube videos, etc. My kid just watches it all on his Ipod. (and then we get to have big discussions about what kind of stuff really isn't as cool (or appropriate) as it looks and why.)


:hi:

[May Hamm]

73. Remember when you had to WATCH TV movies?

Because if you missed something you were just out of luck. It might be months or maybe never before it would be shown again.

[Rabrrrrrr]

105. AND had to watch movies on TV because there were no VCRs, laserdiscs, or DVDs.

So when CBS or whatever was playing a James Bond movie on a Friday or Sunday night, it was a big fucking deal that had half the country watching, and weeks of advertising ahead of time.

[pink-o]

25. Yeah, one of my life's greatest ironies is when I was a kid and dying to talk on the phone...

I had to fight my family members, get my time limited and listen to my mother telling me to keep it down as my friends and I screamed over the cute boy who talked to us in the hall that morning.

Now, in my Haggage, I have the Iphone 4 with a million Apps and every time it rings I get pissed off cuz I don't wanna hear from ANYONE. Y'all know whenever you get a call it just means someone wants your a$$ for something and it ruins your whole day.

Most of the time, with access to all phone all the time, I turn the sucker off and throw it in a drawer!

[kentauros]

33. I just let the battery die.

I'll still have it on me (or in my "electronics bag" with a portable word-processor that gets way more use) but it'll be completely dead. If anyone ever complains, I can just pull out the brick and feign, "Oh, I forgot to charge it."

[Curmudgeoness]

26. Just today, I got this email that addresses this and much more.

I am not going to bother cleaning this up, so excuse the mess:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
stories about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with
walking five miles to school every morning.... Uphill...
Barefoot...BOTH ways...yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in
hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard
I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of forty, I can't help but look
around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean,
compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it,
but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

1) I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to
know something, ** we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves,
in the card catalog!! ** We had to learn how to spell because we didn't have spell check.

2) There was no email!! ** We had to actually write somebody a letter - with
a pen! ** Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in
the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10
cents! When someone gave you a gift you were so thankful you wrote a thank you note.
Todays kids are gimme gimme gimme and no thank yours.


3) Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a
matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick
our ass! Nowhere was safe!

4) There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! !
Y ou had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ
would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD
players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and
"eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it
useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

5) We didn't have to be tan all year round or have fabulous fingernails. We laid out in the summer
and used the fake glue on nails that flew off.

6) We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone
and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!

7) There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house,
you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out
of touch with your "friends". ** OH MYGOSH !!! Think of the horror... not
being in touch with someone 24/7!!! ** And then there's TEXTING. You never
had to worry about being hit by someone talking or texting on their cell phone.

8) And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had
no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your
bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!
You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

9) We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square!
You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple
levels or screens, it was just one screen.. Forever! And you could never
win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster
. Just like LIFE!

10) You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
** You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your
ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! ** NO REMOTES!!! Oh,
no, what's the world coming to?!?! And you had to learn to compromise and take turns
watching TV because most families only had one TV and it was black and white. Not every person
in the house had to have their own boob tube in their room.


11) There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on
Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? ** We had to wait ALL WEEK for
cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards! **

12) And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we
had to use the stove! Imagine that! We had to eat what our Mother made...or else go
hungry. We didn't hop in the car and go get fast food.

13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh,
no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside...
you were doing chores!

14) If you got caught doing something bad you got punished. If you swore you got your
mouth washed out with soap; if you stole something from a store you had to take it back;
if you lied you were told your nose would get bigger like Pinocchio; if you sassed you got
your ass smacked, you did your chores first and had fun later.


And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you
hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at
the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the
dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first
place! The cars we had didn't have air conditioning. You had to wind the windows down...
no magic button to do it for you. You were lucky if your car had FM...alot of cars only had AM.

Can't forget clothes and shoes. We had one pair of dress shoes and one pair of play shoes. If we did
have holes in our clothes, we were embarrassed to wear them. Our mothers had to sew
patches over the holes. Today kids pay $50 for a pair jeans with holes in them.

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got
it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five
minutes back in 1970 or any time before!

[Kat45]

48. I still have to wind my windows down.

I have a 17-year-old car.

[Skittles]

27. my grandparents never had a phone

I have my phones powered off for days a time

[bikebloke]

28. Short phone numbers

I recently found my grandfather's obituary in a local paper on microfilm. It shared a page with a local business advert. The phone number was 140. This was Alexandria, Virginia in 1932.

[comsymp]

37. Hell, even in the mid-1970s a couple small towns

near my hometown only required 5 digits - they had the full seven but the first two of the exchange were the same: 892 & 897, so not necessary to dial.

[Phentex]

30. Then ringmaster came along and you could at least tell

it was for your sister! She had her own ring.

[Kaleva]

32. We were on a party line when I was young. Shared the phone line with several other households.

Quite often when one wanted to make a call, you had to wait till the other person was done talking to whoever and had hung up. If it was an emergency, you could tell the others on the line you had to make a very important call and they'd hang up.

[david13]

36. No we didn't. Some people were on an 8 family or 8 household

party line.
I don't know what percent, or whether there were more than 8 party party lines.
dc

[Kaleva]

41. Also had only one tv channel when growing up.

It was WLUC-TV channel 6 out of Marquette. Sometime in the 70's, PBS on channel 13 became available.

[WinkyDink]

61. Why would you not have had ABC, NBC, CBS?

[May Hamm]

72. LOL! Youngster!

Why only one TV station? Well, that's the point of this discussion, isn't it? *chuckle* That these days people do not understand what life was like back in the olden days of not much technology.

[Kaleva]

74. WLUC-TV was a CBS affiliate.

[Bombero1956]

50. The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Landline phones are the only thing.

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.

[LibDemAlways]

91. 11. They applied to college online, were accepted online, and

met fellow classmates online on Facebook before ever setting foot on campus.

[hippywife]

51. And we only got to talk on it

for 5 minutes! x(

[ashling]

52. And when my dad called my aunt in San Antonio all us kids

got to line up for our 30 seconds on the phone.

[texanwitch]

54. And not a second more.

Also getting a letter saying that this person was going to call you long distance at a certain time.

[ashling]

55. Remember calling home collect for yourself so

your parents would know you made it back to the dorm ....

from the payphone in the hall!

[May Hamm]

56. Oh Goodness! We used to do that.

Calling collect for ourself. LOL I forgot all about that.

[May Hamm]

57. Oh Goodness! We used to do that.

Calling collect for ourself. LOL I forgot all about that.

[LynneSin]

84. I use to do this thing with my mom where I would call her collect asking for my brother

and since my brother wasn't home my mom wouldn't accept the call but then she would call back a minute later.

What sucked is at college we had 2 pay phones on the floor and no room phones. One pay phone was in a booth and the other was out there in the hallway. Of course everyone wanted the phone in the booth cause you had privacy and there was a seat. Only problem was all the smokers would use it and the booth had the nastiest of smells in it from all the heavy smoking that happened in there.

[old mark]

59. LS- This is a pic of the first commercial cell phone, from 1983-

http://www.pcworld.com/article/131450/in_pictures_a_history_of_cell_phones.html


The prototype cost almost $4000 and weighed 2 pounds.

Looks like a brick with an antenna.


mark

[kentauros]

64. I always like lineman's phones/handsets:

:D

[LynneSin]

83. They showed that in the Wall Street sequel

Gordon Gecko used one is the main Wall Street movie. It was a perfect example of how the world changed around him while he was in jail.

[snagglepuss]

98. That's a great slide show. I can't believe the Razor came out in 2004. I

remember so many people just having to have the Razor. Now so dated.

[WinkyDink]

60. And if you're smart, when you call a business you'll pretend to have a rotary phone. Faster service.

[Curmudgeoness]

66. Not always. I have a rotary phone and

sometimes you cannot get anything. The system hangs up on you if you don't press something.

[zanana1]

75. We had a two-party phone!

Imagine....five kids and not only just one phone, but only one phone that was accessible about half the time!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

77. We didn't have any privacy,

I would talk on the phone and Dad would hang around and listen.
I knew something was wrong, but didn't know what, so I started going to counseling at Family Service Center, in high school.

It was intolerable. I found out that we had a problem called an enmeshed family with a complete lack of boundaries.

[InvisibleTouch]

78. I'm old enough to remember that, but still...

...I find it really odd when I watch old TV shows or movies, and the characters are running around trying to find pay phones, or having to stop into a store or business to make a phone call. I must say, I prefer the autonomy and privacy of everyone having their own cell phone. We do have it good these days in some ways.

[snagglepuss]

99. It's ironic people have privacy within the family but little in public, nor do people

crave it as they broadcast their conversations to everyone in earshot. I think kids have lost a lot with the advent of cell phones such as not being accessible 24/7 and not experiencing being with a friend or friends witout outside interruptions. Being with people was a different experience before cell phones.

[BrklynLiberal]

82. Excellent point! My sister and I grew up with one phone..on the wall in the kitchen as you stated..

We did eventually get a princess phone....in the hallway.

[LibDemAlways]

90. And if you were out and needed to phone home, you might

have to enter a telephone booth with a dime and hope that the pay phone worked. It was always greasy and smelled like stale aftershave.

Kids today truly don't know how good they have it.

[texanwitch]

92. The problem you had to remember phone numbers.

I don't remember many phone numbers anymore.

[May Hamm]

93. We knew EVERYBODY'S phone number!

We really did. Little kids did too. They learned their own number. Then grandma's. Then Dad's work number (if he could get calls.) Then their friend's. Just like every other kind of learning it happened one at a time until you just knew them all.

Nowadays it not so good. I hardly know anyone's number anymore because I don't dial them often enough to memorize them. It's all in my cell phone and I make calls by name.

[texanwitch]

94. I know about 5 phone numbers now.

You are right about knowing everyone's number.

I really don't miss looking for a phone either.

I forgot my phone at home last week and had to look for a phone, that was a pain.

Of course you didn't have listen to a total stranger phone call when they talk really loud.

I really do hate that.

[Auntie Bush]

95. I remember when my phone number was just 2413

Then I was bummed when they added EM before the number. How could they make it so long? I also remember my relatives had party lines and each family had their own ring...but anyone and everyone listened in.

[LynneSin]

102. I remember when our phone numbers were just 7 digits

then in Pennsylvania they made us go 10 digits.

I think in Delaware you can still dial 7 digits (only one area code in our state) but out of habit I still put the 302 in front of everything.

[orleans]

96. i remember some people had party lines on their phones. wow. n/t

[Joe Fields]

103. We had one phone and had a party line.

And there were phone booths scattered around town.

We also had one television set, and only got three channels.

How did we ever survive?:sarcasm:

[datasuspect]

106. I remember when people had meaningful conversations and could talk in sentences

. . .