20 questions for people who were at least in their 20s before cell phones & internet

[Feralpeg]

1. How did you make plans? We talked it over at school and, when I was older, at work. If there were last minute details to change, we called each other on the land line.

2. How did you CANCEL plans? I would get there eventually. Or, I could find a pay phone and call the restaurant and have them give my friend a message. Since it wasn't so easy to cancel, we were pretty good about making sure we got where we needed to be on time.

3. How did you know who was calling you before you picked up the phone? We didn't know who was calling. We didn't tend to get the spam calls that are so prevalent today.

4. How did you rid of the fear that is calling people? We sucked it up and did what was necessary. Avoidance is not your friend in the long run.

5. How did you find out information about people before you went on dates with them? I knew most of the guys I dated from school or work. If not, they were friends of friends. I didn't tend to go out with total strangers.

6. How did you find people to date in the first place??? Friends, family, school, work!

7. How did you keep tabs on exes? Ex meant moving on. No need to stalk them.

8. How did you keep tabs on what your entire graduating class from high school was doing? I lost track of most of my high school friends until Facebook came along. It is nice knowing what happened to people, but my life wasn't incomplete not knowing.

9. How did you look for jobs? Jobs were posted in the newspaper classifieds. I went to places I thought might be someplace I'd like to work and ask to fill out an employment application. Yes, I manually typed out my resume!

10. How did your parents get in touch with you when you were out? They didn't. I always told my parents where I was going and I got home at a reasonable hour, so they trusted me.

11. How did your survive waiting for meetings, appointments, trains, or anything without being able to pass time by pretending to look busy on your phone? They same way I do it now. I actually like talking to people and often strike up a conversation with strangers. I've met some really nice people that way.

12. How did you do ANYTHING at work before email? If they worked at my place of business, I would walk over and talk to them. If they worked elsewhere, I'd call them on my work phone. I found people to be a lot more willing to work with each other when they had to be face to face.

13. How did you tell co-workers (or someone else you were meeting) that you were going to be late when you were stuck in traffic or stuck on some disabled subway car? I explained the situation when I got there. Unless a person made it a habit of being late, it wasn't usually a problem.

14. How did you sign up for classes at the gym? We did have to go there or call to make an appointment. Of course, those types of classes weren't as popular as they are today. For exercise, we played sports with friends or danced.

15. How did you know where you were or where you were going ever? I knew my city pretty well. If I had to go someplace I didn't know, I used a physical map. Every gas station had maps available.

16. What did you have to do if you broke down on the side of the road? Believe it or not, most people were really nice about stopping to help. It didn't seem to be such a violent, scary world.

17. How did you always have change on you to use these pay phones? I didn't have a credit card until after I graduated from college. I carried cash. When I was old enough to have a job, I opened a bank account and wrote checks when needed.

18. How did you research anything for school? Did you have to go through the Encyclopedia? Library!

19. How did you find out about the weather? There was no weather channel. We watched the local news. The weather person wrote on a board or used magnets for different weather symbols. If we missed the weather report, we stuck our heads outside to see what was happening.

20. How did you stay in touch with friends? I didn't try to stay in touch with a lot of people. I saw my close friends at school or work. We really didn't want or need to stay in touch constantly.

To be very honest, my life was just fine before all this technology. Of course, it's nice in many ways, but I think it hasn't been all good for society.

 

[barkley]

I actually miss going to the library to do research for a paper.

dd's a sophomore in college but when she was a sophomore or junior in high school one of her teachers assigned a research paper that had to be entirely completed through the library's resources (and using the internet or digitized sources at the library was not allowed). the teacher said that he was sick of students handing in papers that were missing key elements and using the excuse that they couldn't find what was needed-when he KNEW for a fact the local library had the information on hand. so dd had to go to the library old school style and do the actual research. she had volunteered at the library for a few years so she was familiar with where to look for items but a hefty percentage of her classmates hadn't stepped foot in one since a field trip in 2nd grade

 

[runwad]

This is a little off topic but there are a lot of things we take for granted that kids can't do today! Like use a can opener!! Most cans have those pull tops. I about died when my neighbor girl came over here cause they had a can that needed an opener and she had no clue how to use it.

And my kids hate to talk on the phone too. It's like getting them to pull teeth to make a phone call for something. And going along with not talking on the phone. Phone etiquette is becoming a lost art too. No one teaches their kids to say hello Mrs. Runwad, this is Willy, may I speak to Clark. Drives me nuts when I answer the phone and they just say is Clark there. I was always taught to greet the answerer. Of course this just applied to friends and family, strangers can't do this they just ask for who they want

 

[bcla]

I remember the early days of an externally networked internet. I had email for my college computer science classes, but it was mostly for the professors and TAs to distribute info. It might have been possible to use these outside, but for the most part that didn't happen since our accounts were available for a specific project and went away once the project was over.

Cell phones certainly existed to some extent when I was in college, but they were very expensive. I got my first phone in 1999 because it was highly recommended when looking for a job. A job search coach recommended it for contacting companies should there be an issue getting to interviews. By that time, the costs were considerably less, but not such that everyone had a mobile phone. I also remember paying $40/month for only something like 120 minutes of talk time per month, and only in a small area. Anything outside of that would be charged for roaming. I got my phone subsidized with a contract, but the full retail price (had to pay sales tax on that) was $600 for a Nokia 5100 series.

As for stopping on the side of the road, I'd typically just wait around and typically law enforcement would see that and they had radios that could be used to call in a tow truck. In some areas there were "freeway patrols" that were private contractors hired by government agencies to clear the roads of disabled cars. I remember having one replace my tire, which I could have done myself but it was going to be messy since I was wearing a suit. The driver also specifically said that he couldn't take gratuities. I've actually encountered one of these services more recently when I was putting on a spare. The driver slowed down to see if I needed aid, and he seemed a little bit disappointed when I showed him that I'd already gotten it on.

I'm actually old enough to remember when the standard cost of a pay phone was 10 cents with all regional Bell System companies, and this remained so for a while after the breakup of AT&T.

As for signing up for classes - at least I did that for municipal recreation classes. Some classes had open registration periods where the first shot to sign up was at a specific event. Other than that, you could sign up at a window. And if you couldn't make it for either during business hours, there was mail-in signup, which often included payment. If the class was full or you signed up for multiple classes and some were full, the check would either be returned or one would get a partial refund.

 

[barkley]

This is a little off topic but there are a lot of things we take for granted that kids can't do today! Like use a can opener!! Most cans have those pull tops. I about died when my neighbor girl came over here cause they had a can that needed an opener and she had no clue how to use it.

And my kids hate to talk on the phone too. It's like getting them to pull teeth to make a phone call for something. And going along with not talking on the phone. Phone etiquette is becoming a lost art too. No one teaches their kids to say hello Mrs. Runwad, this is Willy, may I speak to Clark. Drives me nuts when I answer the phone and they just say is Clark there. I was always taught to greet the answerer. Of course this just applied to friends and family, strangers can't do this they just ask for who they want

the phone thing drives me nuts too-I hate that I have to act like a receptionist and ask every other caller "who is calling please?". half the time they don't know what to answer I'm glad to hear it's not just me that feels this way.

I think phone skills are a dying art, but I also see the same thing with one on one interaction, and it's a subject that is always debated at the autism support group for parents we attend. the therapists continually talk about how important it is for asd kids to practice things like calling people on the phone to chat, and trying to schedule get togethers because they tend to socially isolate, while the parents who have other kids who are neurotypical continually try to point out that it's not the norm with the current generation of teens/young adults to spend time TALKING on a phone or physically hanging out together-their tendency is to do the same thing our asd kids do, communicate and interact electronically.

 

[njmom47]

When I went to college (a real 4 yr school) I was majoring in Secretarial Science.
Shorthand. Business Law. Typing. Really?
I didn't finish school there.

 

[LBIJim]

Am I the only one who read the article as "tongue in cheek" instead of "serious"?

Nah, I immediately thought it was tongue in cheek too.

As for carrying dimes for pay phones, you could call collect. Or "credit cards" for such use were available long before I was born. You dialed 0 for operator, and gave her your CC number, which was most likely your home phone number. Then you can either dial the number you wanted to call yourself or have her do it. The call was billed to your home phone number. It was much more expensive than using a dime, especially if the operator dialed the number for you, but it was very handy if you didn't have any change. Cheaper than collect, too.

We had a party line when I was very young. Our party line partner was a woman who seemed to be on the phone 24/7 chattering in Polish to another woman. It was sometimes fun to listen in, say something kiddie crude in English, and hang up. Finally had to get a private line.

 

[Julia M]

1. How did you make plans? We talked on the phone.....alot! We also didn't make plans and change them and change them again and so on. We made plans and did something. Easier, IMHO.

2. How did you CANCEL plans? If you didn't contact people and get a hold of them, you showed up! You didn't blow people off because you got a better offer and decided you were tired, or whatever. You planned ahead and tried not to be late. If you were, people waited.

3. How did you know who was calling you before you picked up the phone? Really?????? Of course, we didn't have nearly the telemarketers that there are today.

4. How did you rid of the fear that is calling people? That's not an issue that's related to the past.

5. How did you find out information about people before you went on dates with them? I knew people. They were friends of friends.

6. How did you find people to date in the first place??? I think it was easier then. It seems like today people are looking for a "perfect" person and no one is allowed to have any flaws.

7. How did you keep tabs on exes? I still haven't looked for exes, if with the internet.

8. How did you keep tabs on what your entire graduating class from high school was doing? See #7.

9. How did you look for jobs? Want ads!

10. How did your parents get in touch with you when you were out? They didn't!

11. How did your survive waiting for meetings, appointments, trains, or anything without being able to pass time by pretending to look busy on your phone? I talked to people around me. I often brought a book if I thought there would be a wait.

12. How did you do ANYTHING at work before email? ?????????

13. How did you tell co-workers (or someone else you were meeting) that you were going to be late when you were stuck in traffic or stuck on some disabled subway car? I avoided being late. I planned ahead.

14. How did you sign up for classes at the gym? I had never heard of classes at a gym. heck, I'd barely heard of a gym!

15. How did you know where you were or where you were going ever? I remember the Thomas Guides. Gosh, I liked those better then maps. AAA always had maps, too.

16. What did you have to do if you broke down on the side of the road? Counted on the kindness of strangers.

17. How did you always have change on you to use these pay phones? Yep, I kept change in my purse.

18. How did you research anything for school? Did you have to go through the Encyclopedia? I remember being home from school for a week with the chickenpox and starting with "A" to read the entire Encyclopedia.

19. How did you find out about the weather? We actually went outside.

20. How did you stay in touch with friends My mom and three aunts used to write the "family letter" Each family member have a letter (so a total of 4) that were sent from aunt to aunt to aunt. When the letter arrived at your house, you removed the previous letter and added in a new one.

 

[indimom]

I took it as tongue in cheek also. I've had these conversations with my kids over the years. They were in AWE when they realized that DH and I traveled around the country with no cell phone and no credit card. We were like brave pioneers to them. lol.

So, just for fun, here are my answers...

1. How did you make plans? But seriously. HOW DID YOU MAKE PLANS. THIS REMAINS A MYSTERY. In person most of the time, at school. But, we did have phones we could use... We just had to wait until the neighbor was finished talking to her mother (party line) and we had a limit on how long we could chat (party line manners). And you had to stay within 6 feet of the phone because the cord didn't reach very far, so sometimes you had to make secret plans RIGHT IN FRONT OF PARENTS because the phone was in the kitchen.

2. How did you CANCEL plans? So you’re stuck in traffic and you’re not going to make it to dinner with your friend. How in the WORLD did you let this friend know? You didn’t have a cell phone. He/she didn’t have a cell phone. People must have gotten stood up on back then… a lot. I grew up "in the country" so we didn't get stuck in traffic. Sometimes we got held up by a tractor, but we'd get there eventually. We learned to be patient. We also didn't just ASSUME that we were the issue if plans went awry or a friend didn't call or whatever. We knew that "something probably came up." I can't get over the young people I know who instantly worry about their status with friends/significant others just because they haven't heard from the person for an hour or two or a plan fell through. OY.

3. How did you know who was calling you before you picked up the phone? Did you just answer the phone without knowing who was going to be on the other end? That sounds so…adventurous. Yep, it was a real adventure. Could be Aunt Mary, could be a salesman,could be the school, could be your BFF.

4. How did you rid of the fear that is calling people? I’m the girl who has skipped appointments and put off apartment hunting just because I have no interest dealing with phone conversations with someone other than my mom or boyfriend. The phone was our primary source of contact, we had NO fear of calling and talking to people.

5. How did you find out information about people before you went on dates with them?Like, you couldn’t Google them… so how did you find out about them? Did you, like, have to talk to them to find out information? What if they lied? How could you trust them? HOW COULD YOU TRUST ANYONE? Usually we had some experience with them somewhere. School. Church. Work. If not, we had to trust our friends or family not to lead us wrong. Can anyone say "blind date" ?? Most of us had at least one date arranged through a trusted third party.

We also took it slow and went on double dates and/or stayed in public places on the first few dates. The next step was meeting family. You can tell a lot about a person by meeting their family. The apple typically does fall near the tree.

6. How did you find people to date in the first place??? It’s hard enough to find someone to date online these days. How did you so many people find significant others back then? See Above.

7. How did you keep tabs on exes? Oh wait, you didn’t? That sounds smart. And also healthy. TOO BAD THE INTERNET HAPPENED. Yeah, they typically just faded away as you moved on. Def. Healthy!

8. How did you keep tabs on what your entire graduating class from high school was doing? You mean that’s was reunions were for? I thought reunions were for seeing all those people you witnessed becoming fat on Facebook in person. I had no interest in keep tabs, but coming from a rural area, the grapevine was alive and well. I usually heard about the "big news" (who had passed away or got married or did something outrageous or truly great).

9. How did you look for jobs? And then apply to jobs? But seriously. This is a legit question. And when you did find jobs, how did you apply? Did you manually write cover letters? And resumes? THE HORROR. Back then, I wasn't really at the resume and cover letter phase of my career. More like filled out applications, had a short interview, and started working.

10. How did your parents get in touch with you when you were out? This might have been the only perk of life before internet. Less annoying parents. They didn't. They had to trust us. When I went to college I didn't talk to my parents for weeks, long distance calls were expensive. I'm pretty sure I called to let them know when I'd be home for a weekend though.

I had mono my freshman year of college. My parents didn't even know. I went to the clinic on campus and took care of myself.

My BIL had an abscess in his throat one year at college (we went to the same school). His roommate and I took him to the ER and we didn't even call his parents. lol. Didn't even think about it, although I'm sure the hospital let them know since they would have to cover the bill.

11. How did your survive waiting for meetings, appointments, trains, or anything without being able to pass time by pretending to look busy on your phone? Like how did you avoid eye contact with people? Did you READ A BOOK? Did you stare at the wall? Did you play with your fingers? Confused. Books. Talk to the person next to you. Showed up on time. At the airport, your family could walk right to the gate and wait with you.

12. How did you do ANYTHING at work before email? Now if the internet doesn’t work, offices basically shut down. But once upon a time internet didn’t work, so please someone tell me how that all went down. Interoffice memos, snail mail, phone calls. Honestly, I didn't work in this type of job pre-internet so I'm sure there are others who can answer this question more fully.

13. How did you tell co-workers (or someone else you were meeting) that you were going to be late when you were stuck in traffic or stuck on some disabled subway car? Did you just risk getting fired all the time? Or was life better because people didn’t expect you to be in constant communication all the time. Probs that. Again, you didn't. Life happened and people knew that, so we left early if traffic might be a problem. And, if we were still late, we explained when we got there.

And sometimes we had to use our critical thinking skills. My Sister and BIL were at my parent's house (more tools there) repairing a lawn mower. My parents left to go shopping. When they came back, the mower was parked and running on the front lawn, my sister's car was gone and the front door was wide open. They went inside and found blood on the floor, the key cabinet open, and a set of keys missing. Checked the barn, and a car was also missing.
(Sis had left BIL there alone, and he made a "rooky mistake" and was injured working on the mower. So, he had to borrow a car and drive himself to the ER.)
They couldn't quite figure out why two cars were gone, but they called the local ER to make sure whoever was injured had made it there and was getting treatment. Then they cleaned up the mess, and waited for "the kids" to call with an update.

14. How did you sign up for classes at the gym? Did you have to like, physically GO to the gym and sign up by writing your name on a piece of paper hours or days before the class took place? Because that’s just, like, a huuuuge inconvenience. No gyms. We played sports with friends (We only had about 5 channels and one TV in the whole house which the parents typically controlled), we rode bikes everywhere, we worked in the garden. We didn't have to schedule exercise because we got it regularly without planning.

15. How did you know where you were or where you were going ever? Did you have carry around a real live map on you at all times? Did you also have a compass? Were you also John Smith in Pocahontas? I’m onto you… Yep, a real paper map for trips out of state. We also understood north, south, east and west, how to get detailed verbal directions, and how to read street signs.

16. What did you have to do if you broke down on the side of the road? I know, I know. Payphones existed. But did they exist everywhere? Were you, like, the subject of a Lifetime movie where you had to walk the streets until you found a house and hope a rapist/murderer didn’t open the door after you knocked? I got lucky the couple times this happened.
Once I got a flat bike tire on a highway about 10 miles from home. I was planing to walk the bike 2 miles to the nearest neighbor I knew well, but dad happened to pass by on his way home from work.

On another occasion, my crappy teen car overheated on the interstate. My uncle just happened to pass and recognized my car. He stopped and helped me out (and probably saved me from a lifetime of scars because I was preparing to open the radiator cap while the car still hot completely clueless about what could happen).

I remember my dad stopping to pick up a stranger on the side of the interstate in the middle of a snowstorm when I was really young. We had 7 people in a 5-seater hatchback Escort. We drove him to the next off-ramp and dropped him off at a service station.

17. How did you always have change on you to use these pay phones? Did you really carry a bunch of cash and coins on you??? LOL, WHAT IS MONEY THAT IS NOT ON A CREDIT CARD. I lived in the boondocks so to speak. Our pay phones were few and far between. We called collect from businesses or school if we had to make a call. My car broke down at my high school once. I called home collect from the school office. My grandmother lived with us and was hard of hearing. When the operator said she had a collect call from Susan, my grandmother responded, "she's not home right now, she'll be home at 6pm", and hung up. I had to make another collect call and explain to the operator that she would have to speak SLOWLY and CLEARLY.

18. How did you research anything for school? Did you have to go through the Encyclopedia? Do youths even know what Encyclopedias are? Because I doubt it. But anyway, how did you pass school? Libraries. Card Catalogs. Magazines. Encyclopedias. Microfiche. Textbooks. Most of us had a set of enclyclopedias at home. Salesmen sold them door to door and guilted most parents into buying annual updates to ensure their children's education.

19. How did you find out about the weather? Did you have to watch The Weather Channel? Because, if so, that sucks. RADIO primarily. Of course, sometimes we weren't listening. My dad was bowling with his buddies when the Blizzard of 76 started and he had a rough drive home.

20. How did you stay in touch with friends? Did you only have, like, 3 friends? Because that is a huge undertaking to keep in touch with any more than 3 people on a regular basis via a phone you could only use at home. I can barely stay in touch with people through texting and gchat and email and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter… Life must have been real hard back then, guys. We used the phone primarily. But, we also wrote letters when people moved away, etc. My husband was in the military when we started dating. We both still have every long letter and card we sent during those years we were apart.

 

[tvguy]

My son graduated from High School in 2005. He reminded me that internet sources were not allowed on any of his papers. My daughter started the next year, and they started allowing them. What a difference 10 years makes.

 

[Bilberry]

I remember when cell phones were just becoming popular. I was working in purchasing at the time. Sales people were calling me non stop! When a cell phone was offered at work, I remember being very much against having it! The last thing I wanted was new places for sales reps to find me.

Today I don't know what I'd do with out my cell phone.