I was just thinking about cell phones in terms of my parents
.My dad was born in 1910 and my mother 1913 and I have no idea whether or not phones of some sort were part of their childhoods or not.
I do know that in my earliest memory, we had one black phone, on a desk in our kitchen, that in order to use you had to pick up and ask the operator to dial your number. We were told if we ever had to call Dad at his store we were to say ""615R3, please" Imagine. 615R3 was the magic "open sesame" to our father's store, three miles away.
In later years we had a "party" line, and oh, that translated so literally for us kids! We listened in on all the conversations we could whenever we could sneak it in! And the inconvenience was mammoth if you had talkers on the line. We were civilized, after all,and didn't just break in, but on the flip side I can remember Mother, taking a break from her endless work, and sitting down at the desk, fanning herself with her apron, calling Aunt Anna to catch up on all the latest news. That catch-up went on and on!!
But just think how their lives would have unfolded differently if they had been in continual contact with everyone like we are. While the distance then often contained important information missed, it also contained a bit of lovely mystery.
Sometimes you just don't need to know.
