The Telephone

A friend of mine forgot her cell phone at home today.  All we have heard  today is, "If I had my phone I could tell you."  haha  How true that statement is!  We have come to rely on our cell phones so much!   This of course started quite the discussion!

Remember a day when we didn't have cell phones?  Whatever did we do?!  My grandma used to run the phone office in the small town where I grew up.  She was the operator for that small town and her family lived in back of that office.  If you wanted to make a call, you picked up and asked the operator to connect you. 

The phone I remember when I was a kid was the rotary dial phones and the handset was tethered to the base.  There was the kind that hung on the wall and the kind that sat on the table.  I remember how tired my finger would get dialing.  It was so exciting when they came out with the push button phone!  You were still tethered though, so you had to sit where the phone was.  Then they came out with longer, thinner, sleeker phone that was either rotary or push button.  You could get a super long cord so you could walk around with the phone instead of sit in one spot.

Then there was the cordless phone!  Oh happy day!  You could go pretty much anywhere as long as you were a certain number of feet within the base!

Our parents didn't have a way of keeping constant tabs on us like we do now.  They didn't have gps or cell phones.  We went outside in the morning and we were gone until dinner.  We roamed the neighborhood and our parents didn't worry.  Because I grew up in a small town, my mom always knew where we were and what we were doing because other parents would always tell her.  That's how she lived without a cell phone!

Cell phones have changed a lot too.  There was the bag phone and the brick phone.  The brick phone was a monster of a phone, probably weighed 5 pounds!  You could get a workout just by talking on the phone!  Then they got smaller and smaller until they were so small, they could fit in your pocket.  Now cellphones are computers.  They have gotten thinner, but with bigger screens so you can use the internet, type up a document, play games, keep constant tabs on your kids, open car doors, monitor home security, I use mine for internet provider for my laptop, a calendar, phone book, and so much more!  My whole world is on my phone and that is why I have taken to writing stuff in other places, just in case.  They are portable so they can be taken anywhere.  You can talk to someone without actually having voice contact.  Most people don't have home phones anymore, just several cell phones.  That is how it is in our house.  I did that so my kids would have a phone when the went to the park or to a friend's house. 

A while back, I forgot to take my phone to the grocery store.  Ok, so it was 1 mile away from my house and I felt completely naked and vulnerable without it!  My son was home alone!  What if something happened!  How would he reach me?!  I was gone for 20 minutes and it was the longest, most stressful 20 minutes!  It is amazing how much we have come to rely on those little electronic gadgets.  It's going to be a sad, scary day if we ever lose cell phones!

I think I will tell my friend to check out this blog post...oh wait, she doesn't have her phone!