It's kinda funny for me, I am just old enough to remember certain things, but we have always been "poor enough" or "country enough" to forego certain things for a long time.
I got my first cell phone in November of 2014. Now, before that, my wife had a cell phone that her parents had given her. I would borrow it when I would leave the house if she was staying home. I worked across the street from my house so me using her phone was rare.
One day I was going to a meet set up through this forum actually.
@Chdamn sent me a text. Scared me, didn't know what to do, so I CALLED
@BurnedOutGeek and asked him his advice. A few weeks later, after another meet, this time with
@drypowder , geek showed me how to send a text from inside the Dick's in Apex. I thought it was pretty stupid and told him so. Of course, nowadays, he probably wishes he never showed my how to text. Because now, I'll send him an e-mail, text to ask him if he read it yet, call to ask why he is not responding, then PM him on here to ask why he is mad at me. LOL! I'm that guy that technology SHOULD pass by for the sake of my friends.
I've had my Galaxy 4 for almost a year and a half now and have never downloaded an "App". I don't trust them. Scared of them. My children think it is funny.
On the other hand, until I was 8 years old, we did not have a phone in our house. If we needed to call someone, my mom would write it down, and send me to my Grandparent's house. I had to crawl under 3 fences and run about 400 yards total to get there. Their phone was of course a rotary mounted on the wall in the living room. You had to pick up the phone and see if anyone was talking. It was called a "party line". Several homes in the neighborhood all had to use the same line. If someone was on, you hung up and checked occasionally to see if they were done. Once the line was clear you could place your call. If it was an emergency then you would tell the folks on the phone and they would clear off, although "long distance" often trumped emergency, depending on the nature of the incident.
When we finally got a phone in our house, it was a rotary as well. Hung on the wall in our kitchen. We did get a touchtone phone when I was 16 or 17, but it was still in the kitchen. No phones allowed in our rooms. And it was still corded. I remember asking a girl to the prom within 12 feet of my mom washing dishes. That was the best I could do for privacy. Of course the conversation after the prom was a hell of a lot more awkward and I think I waited until my mom was outside. LOL!
When I was around 14 or 15 there was a girl I liked that I had met at summer camp. She lived in Suffolk Va. We wrote letters fairly often, but by that age, if you wanted to appear more "mature", you would call on the phone. I remember saving around $15-20 of my hay hauling money so I could pay for a 20 minute phone call twice a month or so. Long distance was a big deal back then, and I had to pay for it if I used it. Hell, one of my best friends from elementary school lived on the edge of our school district and his # was long distance. But we knew how to talk fast in code so all we needed to convey was whether or not our parents had signed off on overnight stays. I could usually get out of that one for less than $2 per call.
Maybe I should be in a museum.
