01.19.20 –The DW Sunday Column: It’s 2020…Do You Know Your Child’s Phone Number?
When I was young, I remember a commercial: “It’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your children are.” I was the kid, the commercial was for my parents.
Research show the details of this memory is from a public service message that started in the 1960’s.
Today, of course we know where our children are — we can track them via their phone!
It leads to a new question: “It’s 2020 — do you know your child’s phone number?”
I mean do you have the number memorized? No contact list. No looking at One Note. Don’t look at a saved email. No account look up from Verizon. Without the aid or a written or electronic method, do you know your child’s phone number?
Memorizing phone numbers back when I was young was needed. In my city, you could call someone in my town with just four numbers, making it easy to memorize. I can even give you my home number back then, it was 4224. Seriously, in 1976 you could call my house, if you were in my city, by dialing 4224. Of course it took a little bit, because you had to DIAL 4224. As in a rotary dial. Put your finger in 4, move to the right ’til you can’t go no more.
Release. Then 2 to the right, Release. I was thankful our number was not 9889 — or my finger would have been tired. Or, more typical — sometimes you released too soon, and you had to start over.
I remember the progression of life past just four numbers…first, we had to dial 894- then 4224. Then, came the explosion of area codes that I still don’t understand, and perhaps will do research for another day. Bottom line, all of a sudden, Chicago had three or four area codes in just the metro area! At the time, I could not wrap my mind around the fact you would need to dial the area code and the seven digit number to call from one floor of the Sears Tower to another. Can you imagine if we were still using the rotary dial at this time? Dial to the right — 7, release. 7, release, 3…..
Of course we evolved. We now go to the contacts icon, click. Type in name. Find name. Click. The number does not even show up — just the contact name. It simply shows calling, “Daughter” … or whatever name you originally typed in.
Which leads me to the year 2020 question: “Do you know your Children’s phone number?”
My story:
My daughter is in her 30’s. I am visiting her new place in Nashville.
It is time to get internet access, cause, you know, need to be online when visiting my child and her husband.
First question: “What is your ID, is it the “ManInToliet”…is it “DontEnter” or….xxxxx ?
I get the answer (It is NOT ManInToliet).
Then, what is your password?
The answer from my daughter: “xxxxx — plus …my phone number.”
Oh, my, I think to myself. What is her phone number?
I then think, when she picked me up at the airport, at the crowded curbside it took about 10 calls and texts to find each other. What would have happened if I drained my battery and had to call her without my contact list from another phone? Worse, what if I lost my phone? Do I have enough change to put in the pay phone at the airport? Shoot, does the airport even have a pay phone? Does any place in America still have a payphone? This would be one time that I would love to find a phone booth, with a payphone, with a rotary dial. Let me google to see if I can find one; oh wait, if my phone battery is dead, or phone lost, I guess the google thing goes away.
Ok, I digress….I still have a blank look on my face.
I think about the Geico commercial…where the person at the office is going to send an email, and hesitates. The lizard says “you don’t know my name, do you?’ You think how this really happened at work one time. I said to the co-worker “I will send you an email with more information” ..and luckily they walk away. I ask the person next to me, um, I am not sure how to spell their name, to avoid saying I don’t know their name at all. Then, the person next to you says — “you spell it S-m-i-t-h.” ….Um, “thanks, what about the first name?.” Answer: “John.” Uh, ok.
Well, I digress, again. I still have a blank look on my face.
My daughter and I finally look at each other. We laugh. She figures out that I do not have her number memorized. She gives me the number. I now have internet access.
