Meg recently heard an old-fashioned phone ring tone, and it immediately brought her back 35 years ago to a tiny shared bedroom, where she and her sister Bee had the Pink Princess phone. It wasn’t a gift or anything, they just finally called the phone company and ordered a new line for their room. They were sick of sharing the kitchen phone, OK? And the phone company never asked how old they were, either.
Meg remembers it sitting on the bedside table, where the earpiece could easily be snagged without her head leaving the pillow. It was all about convenience, people. And possibly being a little too hungover to pick one’s head up too fast.
NPR recently featured a website called the Museum of Endangered Sounds. The website doesn’t have a whole lot on it, but a few of them were gems that brought Meg back to the golden age. Or maybe it was just the 80′s where gold was popular and everyone dripped in charms and shrimp hoop earrings.
Don’t be all alarmed kids, but Meg used to type her early college papers on one of these babies:
And see the metal ball? If you were lucky, you had several of these so you could change fonts. And they were in a little special case so you could go from Courier to Gothic. Crazy, man.
She even sported one of these turntables, and yes, she had a Three Dog Night collection, too.
Don’t judge me.
Please don’t tell me you never played a game of Pacman:
Right, that was mostly the sound Meg heard.
One of the sounds Meg really liked from the 80′s and 90′s was this:
Here’s the deal kids. When you signed up with a provider, you were given a secret decoder ring with a phone number, and if you were lucky and combined the right phone number with the correct button on the external modem, typed in the secret password, and landed a connection, you were considered blessed. In some cases, it meant you hit the jackpot on a snow day, and you could work from home, hogging the bandwidth for 8 hours while other people had to take a vacation day during a blizzard. HA. And that’s why a modem was music to a computer professional’s ears.
Well, it’s about days end, and Meg is going to head to the fridge and hear one of her fave sounds, ice clinking in a glass:
I’m with you, kid.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
What about the busy signal on the phone? No one under the age of 30 has every heard it!
The Zadge´s last [type] ..Wherein the Zadge reverts to her 8-year old self and pulls a “Ring and Run”
uh, *ever*
The Zadge´s last [type] ..Wherein the Zadge reverts to her 8-year old self and pulls a “Ring and Run”
Hey! I was going to say the busy signal! Now I have to think of another one. Hmmm. I’ll get back to you.
Dawn in DC´s last [type] ..Wordless Wednesday…with some words…
I loved typing on an IBM Selectric. That’s what we had at East High School in 1997. LOVED IT.
It was one of the most satisfying feelings ever, typing on that thing.
Her Ace in the Hole´s last [type] ..40 thoughts
Mrs. Tuna’s parents were so cruel as to not get call waiting and forced us to use the only telephone in the house located in the kitchen. This certainly cut down on smutty talk with Mrs. Tuna’s boyfriend.
Mrs. Tuna´s last [type] ..The Boss Whisperer
Busy signal: Remember asking the operator if she’d check the line to determine if someone was talking or if the phone was off the hook?
I don’t.