CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

 I was watching a lady about my age try to explain to her 8 year old granddaughter the function of a "gossip" bench or telephone table. She went into detail how important it was for the seat to be comfortable, as you may be there for a while. The color finish, where to put the item in your house, and several other points were covered. The young child looked dutifully at her grandmother the whole time the lady spoke. When she had finished, this beautiful little child looked her squarely in the eyes and said, "Grandmother, what's the point of a cell phone if you have to stay in one place?" Out of the mouths of babes!

 For some reason known only to GOD, I drive a school bus (given my love for untrained children) and find myself doing what amounts to the same thing with my riders. Since I don't let them talk while the bus is in motion and we have several minutes to wait in the morning before unloading, they try to find a reason to ask questions, 'cause with them it is talk or explode!

You probably don't know this about me, but I like to do all the talking (insert laughter here). Our, or rather my, favorite topic is to tell them what my life was like at their age. And to think, I SWORE I would never become my father. Those of you who are "boomers" will get it, the "kids" (that's 40 and under) won't.

In the late '40's, if you could afford a telephone, you most likely were on a PARTY LINE. When I first told my students this, one young man blurted out, "Man you s....... me! What fool is going to let someone listen when he be talkin' trash?" Well, first, you didn't "talk trash" on the phone, it was for important stuff mostly. But you certainly had better not say anything you didn't want known or repeated. I think it was Southern Belle policy to put at least 3 old women on each party line to keep the conversations brief and clean! They especially were dumbfounded when I told them just because the phone rung, it did not mean that you could answer it. It might not be "your" ring. I might as well have been trying to teach them Latin by the looks on their faces.

Then I instructed them on making a long distant call. You have to first decide if you want person-to-person or a station-to-station call. The latter means that you will talk to whoever picks up and the first, of course, means you only want to talk to the person whose name you give to the operator. After giving the phone and name, if needed, to the operator, you hang up and wait for the phone to ring (your ring) and the operator will tell you that she has your party on the line. More LATIN stares 
When I told them that we once waited almost 24 hours for my Uncle Ed to call us from California, it was more than they could believe.

The looks that they gave me when I told them the joy of getting our first "push-button" phone must have been the same kind of look that I gave my folks when they told me of getting their "first" things. I had to remind the children that the phones had cords, to which one child asked why?

I took off my shoe to illustrate that it was the approximate size of the first cell phone I ever used. As you can imagine that brought a huge laugh, and I laughed too, thinking about it. My 12 to 16 students could not comprehend that those early cell phones did not have cameras, contacts, texts, MP3's, and the whole list of today's standard features. As many of you know, the DROID X just came on the market and will do everything except mow the lawn. As true as I know it is, I can not wrap my head around the fact that the DROID X will be as old fashioned as a dial phone, probably before I leave this world!

A parting thought and bit of a practical joke, if I can find one of my old dial phones, I will ask Dr. Hollis, our principal, if she will let me plug it in for the students to use. Every time they get mad, which is constantly, they say, "I'M GONNA CALL MY MOMMA ON YOU!" It would be outrageously funny to see them try to use something that they have never seen before!