Hello Cpt. Kirk

My day started off answering calls completely unrelated to my job. Contractors were calling wanting to get a city business license and they had been given my number in error. It was an interesting morning.

I was having a laugh with a co-worker telling her about it and we got into this whole crazy discussion about phones, and how it was in the olden days. (Who the hell invented that descriptor?) Back then we had the rotary dial phones. I haven’t seen a real one in use for years. The last time I had to use one it was like a torture. You pull that dial up and over with your finger, release it, and then wait for it to roll back and do it all over again six more times. I’d forget the number I just dialed, it took so long. That was for a 7 number call, now we make 10 number calls, plus “9” to get an outside line, but we do it so much faster, especially when we have the number in our speed dial.

I used to have tons of numbers memorized; now I only have a few. Numbers I call on a regular basis I would never be about to recite, they’re all programmed into the phone. Back in the day, we had little spring loaded, pop-up directories that sat next to the phone with everyone’s phone numbers and addresses written in. I loved moving the little indicator to the correct alphabet letter and then pushing down on the catch and watching the cover pop up. There was something very satisfying about that.

Years ago call waiting is what happened after you got a busy single and then had to wait to try again. You spent the time hoping they would be off the phone but still there to pick up..

Being put on hold meant the receiver was left hanging by the cord, or sitting on the corner of a table or desk. You got to hear everything going on in the room, no music usually. Although sometimes you got to hear things you weren’t suppose to hear. Things you wished later you hadn’t heard, but mostly just really boring stuff.

Voice mail was pretty spotty, we all had to rely on who every answered the phone to take a message and get it right. (Remember the old game Telephone? You got in a circle and the first person whispered something into the second person’s ear and then the second one whispered what they heard to the third and so on down the line. The last person never ended up with what was started.) We also had to hope they remembered to give us the message.

Call forwarding was especially difficult because you couldn’t leave a message on your phone. You would have to call everyone and let them know what number you would be at. It wasn’t like this was easy for the person receiving the info either, we didn’t have post-its back then. Keeping track involved bits of paper and old styled scotch tape.

A mobile phone was one with a 25 foot cord. And as for wireless, forget about it, that was just crazy talk.

What I find really amazing is that growing up on of our favorite TV shows was Star Trek, and one of the things I loved about is were the communicators. The way they pulled them out of their pockets and flip them open and began to talk. Holy crap Cpt. Kirk, we have met our future, and it is you!