Today, kids and parents can connect and communicate anytime of the day because of smartphones. The phones are not used to call someone. We just text. Even better, we will text someone to see if it is okay to talk. Needless to say we can know where our kids are at just by sending a text. When I was growing up that was never the case. Even though we didn’t have smartphones, we were able to let our parents know our whereabouts just by using our intuition and no texting.
No Texting, No Problem
Picture this scenario without using a smartphone. Your team’s practice is moved to tomorrow. Both of your parents are working. No one is home and you forgot your house key. There is no texting. What do you do hotshot? Well, there are many answers depending on your gumption. Where is your school located in relation to your home? Are there restaurants near you to hang out in until you can contact your parents? Can you stay at a friend’s house? Generations before the invention of the smartphone were the MacGuyvers of solving this problem. We had so many outs. We didn’t need to panic.
We just walked to our friends house or grocery store and killed time until our parents got out of work. We might even use the phone from a restaurant to call our parents on where to pick us up. And when I mean restaurant phone, it could either be a pay phone or their business line. If you used a pay phone and had no change to pay for the call you could do a collect call. All you needed to do is just leave your message when you had to state your name and avoid any cost to you.
Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention
What about if you are home and your friends call you to see if you can meet up at the park and your parents weren’t around? You just left a note by the kitchen table letting them know where you ventured off for the afternoon. If you went to a friends house you would leave the friend’s phone number for your parents to call when they got home. Going back to the earlier scenario about practice being cancelled, you could make a call from the school office. See? There were so many ways to solve that problem.
Technology is a great thing. I am so glad I have a smartphone to help make my life easier. It is just funny that now we panic when we see the low battery message pop up and feel like the world will end. I think parents need to share stories with their kids about surviving in the wild without a phone. These are life skills that will help them in the future and they can pass that knowledge onto their kids. You never know when those skill will come in handy.
This brings me back. I loved growing up in the 80s. Seemed like kids did a lot more outside back then.
I agree with you. Back in the day kids were all outside playing with friends.
All you needed was a few dollars, your bike and a few friends. My friends and I would ride into the main part of town after school and just do whatever. Miss those days!
Sounds like good times, Jon.