15 Comments

In my classroom, there is a corded phone -- when it rings, there is a definite race (no matter how much I scold) to answer it: "Mrs. Loeffler's room, student speaking!" Do you remember having to learn phone etiquette? I was specifically taught how to answer the phone, what to say to adults if my parents weren't able to come to the phone, etc.

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Oh yes, yes! Not only one of the dwindling minority with a landline, one of the phones still is a rotary phone. If you really want to swoon down memory lane, pick that one up and dial a number!

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Oh my the memories.... my grandmother lived with our family for about a year....I was displaced to welcome her. She came with powder, and grief and stories. I was curious to know her stories. She had a turquoise princess phone installed. We we were close. After she left, I was lucky to move into “her room”and gain custody of her her phone as the eldest. As a teenager this was a huge event. Listening to this brought memories... the very long cord. Endless hours on the phone....

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Our phone was in the kitchen. My brother's bedroom was the first room in the hall next to the phone. As teens, we would always (if he wasn't home) go into that room to talk stretching the cord. As time went by, the cord would be LOOONNNGGG. My dad would get angry that it was tangled, replace it, and we would start the process over again. There were six kids fighting to use the phone. I know we had a schedule for car use, not sure if we had a schedule for phone use!

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Ahhh, the memories! I still have my black dial-up phone hanging on my wall.

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Oh yeah, kind of miss those days when the phone held that element of surprise!

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Yep! Spot on, as usual, Charlotte. All of this happened at my house. Thanks for the memories 💝

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THIS! You nailed it. (thanks for the smiles, and memories!)

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Love!

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This brought back so many memories. The phone. It had its own table that resembled a school desk. When we were teens, my brother, sister, and I were lucky enough to have a "kid's line". There were arguments, hoo boy! Thanks, Charlotte!

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Lost in History: After we bought a home in Portland, Oregon, the morning sunlight across the (wood) kitchen floor caught my eye. I looked closely at an area near a wall and discovered a roughly three foot by three foot spot covered with little divots on an otherwise smooth floor. All I could conclude was that a previous resident was a women with sharply heeled shoes who spent time on a long-gone old-fashioned wall phone with a very short cord. Every time we enter the kitchen, we think of her and the conversations she must have had at that spot.

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Oh, how this takes me back to my very first landline…a Princess-style turquoise precious! Nonrotary! In MY room! The heaven of no longer having a 15 minute limit to calls. Which we ignored whenever possible. Yes, there were arguments.

My sister’s bf went off to college and unbeknownst to me, she was calling him Long Distance and chatting away for hours while I was at work. This stopped after the first $280 bill arrived. Which was only the first half of her usage. I was livid, and I think my parents were secretly amused, despite they had to pay for her calls. Thereafter every time I left the house I removed the microphone from the receiver handle and hid it. Yes of course she tried calling him again. Since the bf couldn’t hear her, he kept hanging up. Good times I hadn’t called to mind in decades.

Now I can’t even *get* a landline! Well, okay, if I wanted to pay for the now only supplier to wire my street for a gazillion dollars, I could get one.

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I always wanted the phone that looked glamorous; like what a Hollywood star would use. It was whitish with gold trim and the headphone part was replaced on the two hooks over the boxy part.

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I too grew up in the days of the rotary phone and the party-line phone. You'd go to use the phone and some stranger was talking to another stranger and would make a nasty comment for you to get off the phone, as if you knew they were talking on it. I grew up with four brothers and they would make prank, random phone calls, the old Prince Albert in a can joke. I was eager to move along with each change and I like having a mini-computer to take along with me although I rarely make telephone calls any more.

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My 80s children would definitely relate to this. Me? I go back a bit further, into the party-line days.

My kids, however, can remember navigating through the kitchen when Mom was on the phone and the 25' cord made it out to the garage, so Mom could have a smoke while she talked. Since the phone was on the wall, they definitely had to go under the cord to get anywhere in the kitchen. Good times!

And they had to navigate the "ask Mom to use the phone in case she's on the internet" era. Wasn't AOHell fun? We dropped them for Earthlink as soon as we could! Now we have a 'landline' connected to the internet. And cell phones for each of us. And phone-ready vehicles. We are so darn connected, I'm not sure how to get UNconnected!!

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