I remember pay phones.

Those were the days! You'd walk down the sidewalk and see a little phone stand. A payphone! The old-style ones had a slot for your quarter, a phone book in a black case, hanging from a chain, and that's about it.

The new ones had a slot for your quarter and a credit card, and a little screen with text messages in green digital numbers. The screen would say something like, "Enter a quarter to make a phone call."


How quaint. I remember you'd dial a long-distance number and it would wait for a moment, as it calculates. Then the screen would ask for $3.40. As you talked, a voice would come on and tell you to enter more money if you were running low.


I remember lines of pay phones in malls. There would be numerous people chatting on the phones. Occasionally, you'd have to lineup and you'd become annoyed at the person who was taking so much time on the phone.

As soon as you hung up, you looked at your hands in disgust. They had to be so dirty. Not to mention that your mouth was basically sharing the receiver with the last person's bad breath molecules. You wanted badly to use hand-sanitizer, but it wasn't invented yet.