Cell Phones and How The World Has Changed

I am going to betray my age here. I remember life before cell phones were invented! Seriously. When I was a kid, we would ride our dinosaurs (just kidding – we had bikes!) and we would ride around the neighbourhood, playing with the other kids, and we came home when the street lights came on. If we needed to phone home, we would go into a friend’s house and ask to borrow the phone.

The phones had cords, so you had to stay in the room with the phone. Rich people had three or four phones, and some teenagers actually had phones in their bedrooms. (I never had a phone in my bedroom.)

Then there were car phones, and again it was rich people who had them. You had to plug them into the cigarette lighter in the car. It was about the size of a phone book. We borrowed one of these when I was nine months pregnant with our first child, who is now almost 18. My husband was driving a transport truck at the time. But then she decided to come when he was home, so we didn’t have to use the phone.

Two years later, when I was nine months pregnant with the daughter who is now 15, cell phones didn’t have to be plugged into anything anymore. They were about the size and weight of a brick. We borrowed one for my husband to take in the truck, but the morning that I was in labour, he forgot to turn it on. I had to call a friend to take me to the hospital.

When we got our first cell phone about ten years ago, they were still quite expensive to use. They were just for emergencies. But as we got used to the convenience, emergencies became whether or not hubby was coming home for supper.

Then the kids started begging for their own cell phones. Apparently our kids were the only ones in the developed world who didn’t have their own cell phones. (They conceded that possibly there were a few children in Africa without cell phones.)

We decided that at age 16, if they had a job and could pay their own bills, they could get cell phones. Our eldest has had a phone permanently attached to her hand ever since. Now with text messaging, she can have 24/7 conversations with her friends. There have been a few times when she became completely overwhelmed because she couldn’t get her homework done because of all the texting. She refuses to believe that the phone has an ‘off’ button, so we have had to confiscate the phone so she can do her homework and chores.

It is a whole new world of connectedness that I am starting to get used to. I remember getting sent to the corner store to buy cigarettes for my parents when I was four. It was memorable because I bought the wrong brand and had to go back and exchange them. These days, corner stores are few and far between, it is illegal to sell cigarettes to minors, and hubby and I don’t smoke anyway. And sending kids or hubby to the store is so much more convenient now that they can call or text home to ask what brand or how many of something to buy.

I am quite fascinated by how new technologies change our lives, and then we just take them for granted, as if we had always had them. My kids are tired of hearing me talk about life before cell phones, microwaves, digital cameras, and even computers! And if I start in on what my mother and grandmother lived without, there would be eye rolls all around as they look up momentarily from their ipods.