- rotary phones and party lines
- dialing a zero to talk to an operator for help or for them to tell you a phone number
- answering the phone to an operator asking you whether you would accept a collect call from someone else
- dialing zero plus the phone number and when your party answered, an operator would ask the other person if they would accept a collect call from YOU
- waiting for evening when the phone rates were cheaper before making long-distance calls
- LATER ON ... cell-phone carriers competing for how cheap EACH MINUTE was. (I remember a boss telling me in the 1990s that anything more than ten cents a minute was excessive.)
- Pretending your flip-open phone was a STAR TREK communicator
- Checking your phone screen for bars (that is, coverage)
- Your cellphone not working inside a metal-roofed building ....
Are YOU old enough to recall the cellphone revolution? Talk amongst yourselves until you come back here Thursday!
