I was digging through some old boxes stored in a closet in my classroom about ten years ago when I stumbled across one that contained lesson plans from the early 70's.
This piqued my curiosity and then caused quite a laugh when I read the unit title of the plans. "How to Use Telephone Etiquette." That’s right. Long before the world of, "kids today cannot communicate because they spend all their time texting," we had a world where educators realized students actually needed to practice how to utilize a rotary phone effectively.
I could go in many directions from this thought. Our world has changed dramatically since the Pony Express. What took a pony and its rider days to deliver can now be done with the touch of a finger in a few seconds. And the number of people we connect to these days is evident with the amount of numbers needed to reach that person.
In my childhood we only memorized four numbers to dial when our party line was free. We didn't need to use the 839. That number was universal in our world. Everyone we knew had these three numbers at the start. We only had to dial those last four which belonged solely to them. And on occasion we did dial a long-distance number that would show up on the phone bill, we had to dial a 1+ and be all formal. It could get expensive to date a boy outside of your hometown.
It was quite a day when Franklinton grew to the point we no longer had only the 839 causing us to now use all 7 numbers dialing on that slow moving rotary phone. The phone attached to the wall in the kitchen or living room. And we had best use that lesson plan of phone etiquette because there was no privacy, and Lord help the boy who called the house after 9 at night.
Then came the cell phones. These contained their own prefixes. At first it was limited to the area where you lived which seemed somewhat manageable to remember. But then it often became the prefix of the place where you purchased your phone. And then random companies got ahold of your cell phone number and began calling you to donate money to the save the whales foundation speaking in a half foreign language. The prefix on their number was the local prefix in your area, so you answered only to hear a staticky voice saying, "Allo Mom, Ow are you today? Are you interested in lowering your Ome Mortgage to less than two percent? We only need your social security number and everything else needed to steal your identity and ruin your life. My name is Tom."
We began to collect so many numbers that we simply stored them in our phone, no longer even attempting to commit them to memory.
I once had to spend close to an hour trying to figure out which Stacey was which stored in my phone. I now have little initials next to stored names indicating to me it is Jennifer Gym or Sara Coach.
And through it all I feel my generation from those old lesson plans has maintained an etiquette of "This is she." "No sir, I am not interested in giving you my bank account numbers and life history. You have a good day too."
I believe somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds that cell phone is still connected to an invisible wall somewhere and Great Aunt Georgie Mae is listening in on the party line.
