You never know when something is going to come along to make you feel old right out of the blue.
About 8 years ago I was at a semi-rural city park north of town, where we were holding our annual Scouting district dinner at a remodeled barn the city rents out for large parties.
As a professional Scout employee, I’d arrived early to help set up. As we finished getting the tables and chairs into place, a couple of the older Boy Scouts who had also been helping came into the barn looking confused.
One of the Scouts came up to me and said, “Mr. Trageser — can we show you something?”
Sure, I answered.
I followed him back outside where three or four other Scouts were standing around what must have seemed to them some kind of artifact from a previous age.
We were standing in a semi-circle, all looking at a pay phone.
I realize they’re not as ubiquitous as they once were — where you had at least a couple of them outside every grocery store.
But still. Is it really possible that a half-dozen young men had lived to the age of 15 or 16 without encountering a pay phone?
In fact, at first I wasn’t quite sure just WHAT we were all looking at.
Finally, the Scout who had come in to fetch me asked the obvious question.
“What is it?”
“A pay phone,” I answered, unsure if I was being pranked.
There was a bit of a pause, then another Scout asked, “What is it for?”
And I realized that they were truly unsure of what it was we were all staring out.
“Well, before cell phones came out, if you were out and needed to make a phone call, you’d find a pay phone — and they were pretty common. You’d put in a dime or a quarter, and then you could make a call.”
They all moved in closer to inspect this curious find from ancient times.
They pointed out the coin slots to one another; enough of them had seen standard telephones at home or in their classrooms that they at least knew it was a phone.
Then another Scout offered another question:
“Where does it store your contacts?”
“We had to memorize our friends’ phone numbers,” I said. “Or we carried them in a little notebook.”
I noticed that this pay phone had the directory attached underneath — so I pulled that up. None of them had ever seen a Yellow Pages before, and they were amazed that someone had printed out an Internet listing of all the local businesses.
As I turned to go back inside, one of the Scouts asked if they could try the pay phone.
“Of course,” I told them.
One of them fished out a quarter, they took the handset off the cradle, put in their quarter ... and then his face fell in disappointment.
I asked what was wrong.
“I think it’s broken,” he said, “Listen — it’s making a weird noise,” and handed me the handset.
I put it to my hear, and heard the familiar buzz of a dial tone.
And slowly realized none of them had ever heard a dial tone.
-30-
Just decided to ring in the new year by creating my own author playground. Took me long enough, but I was not contributing much more than comments about the work by other authors.
Perhaps you will enjoy my first offering, an example of how pig headed young reporters can be.
https://dennismills.substack.com/p/the-first-step-in-any-endeavor-will
The world changes rapidly, doesn't it?