Changes from a Gen-X’er

Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares…

If it feels like we’re living in a time of uncertainty, well, it’s because we are. So much has changed even in my lifetime (I’m 51, born in ‘68).

From phones with chords (that you got by driving down to the local Bell store and picking from one of three colors: black, white, and beige), pay-phones (that used real coins) near the 7-Eleven, maps (that were printed on paper that you got by going to the nearest AAA store), cars with carburetors (remember priming the engine with several pumps on the gas pedal before starting?), no electronic games, and credit cards that you had to imprint on multiple thin carbon copy sheets…

If you were broke, you could ring in a charge the day you sent your payment in by mail, hoping the snail-mail would get there before the credit card carbon copy did

…and all those things that Gen X-ers like to tell younger folks ‘how it was.’

The Telephone was a legit BFD growing up… we lived in BFE, USA.

You picked up the phone and were connected to an operator (a human), who then connected you to the person you were trying to call. Of course they could listen in.

We had one phone in the kitchen, and it had a 20 foot chord.