Can You Find Me Now?
It’s a good thing we have so many ways to communicate.
I’m an 80s kid. I grew up with a rotary phone on a party line. For those of you who exist in the modern era, a party-line meant that you shared a phone line but not a phone number. At any point, you could pick up the phone and listen to other people’s conversations like a filthy creeper. The rotary dial spun circles out of numbers with a spiral cord that let you stand three feet away from the heavy rock that was our phone.
Local phone calls cost a base amount, and long-distance (any place without your three-digit phone code) tended to be dollars per hour to talk to your family. A lot of people invested in stamps and USPS rather than lose whole paychecks to interacting with far-flung relatives. And international calls cost obscene amounts of money that no one could afford.
My family graduated from a party line (thank you, Progress!) and leveled up to a three-pound phone with push buttons and a six-foot cord. It didn’t reach my bedroom, but at least no one except my family was listening to my side of the conversation. Long-distance remained expensive.
Then my parents moved to the literal middle of nowhere. The only phone service available was cell phones. Back in the early 90s, cell phones looked more like the satellite phones that movies portray. They were also hooked up to a…
