Thoughts about telephones

Thoughts about telephones  

Older people and I really mean Senior Citizens do not use the telephone in the same casual way that younger people do. I guess that is probably because they can remember the birth of the telephone service and how it was a privilege to have it when they were young and it was to be used sparingly.

We had no telephone in my house and to make a call you would have to go about ¼ of a mile to one of those lovely ( and usually) dirty, red call boxes that are now considered a tourist attraction in England. 

Hopefully the interior light would still be on and not vandalized but if you were smart , you always took a flashlight with you. Maybe you would have to wait until the person already inside making a call, had finished. It always seemed to take forever. Eventually you would go in, holding your breath as the smell usually inside these boxes was none too pleasant. You would go in clutching the coins you would need to make a call praying you had the right amount of coins to put in the box to pay. It wasn't cheap either. This was not a fun experience and to be used as little as possible.

If you were lucky enough to have a phone in your home you again used it only occasionally as it was expensive. If you borrowed a neighbor's phone to make a call , you always offered to pay for it. Most neighbors would let you use their phones if they had one, but again this would be for emergencies only.You would never bother your neighbors unnecessarily.

We also remember the first early cell phones and how heavy and difficult they were to use .Hearing a call was very patchy. Calls were often dropped or were often not available in certain areas.And don't mention the size of the batteries they needed!!

Thank goodness the mobile phone and services developed fairly rapidly . The trouble is there seems to be a problem in stopping the development of these mobile phones. They get smaller and smaller every time they put out a new one, and the system changes so frequently that they are constantly advertising the new one that everyone must have. You really wonder where this will end.

We do okay at my house. We have a small uncomplicated inexpensive phone that we use once in a while and are thankful for it when we have an emergency especially when we remember our days of visiting the old red telephone box .