Fun & Famous
Dating pre cell phone era
I’m old enough to be able to say that I worked in an era when the internet didn’t even exist. Well, it did exist (it was used as a military network which then was taken over by American universities), but as a beginning sub editor prepping an interview with a famous person, you’d have to get your hands on a folder full of anything that had ever been written about person X and you’d have them fax it over to do your research.
Cell phones didn’t exist yet. Yes, this meant life was entirely different than it is nowadays (I still have maps in my car from when you needed books to figure out your directions) but dating life had a whole other dimension too. No apps or likes and comments on your Facebook, this was real work.
”Portable devices hadn’t been invented yet’
I recall never, brave as I was, deciding to call the object of my desire J to see if he wanted to meet up. I would have to do it through my landline. Portable devices hadn’t been invented yet. Thank god we had a living room and my parents bedroom for a bit of privacy. This is where I could practice looking and sounding cool. I would say his name first, and then mine, sounded very in control. So there I went. Dialed the numbers and waited for him to pick up and… he picked up. Okay, I could do this. “Hi Britt, it’s J.” That’s seriously what I said. Fail. Pretty sure I don’t need to explain that the two of us never worked out…
A few years later I (hip hip hooray, champagne) had really cool photos in my apartment (picture one of those massive phones with an antenna like Carrie always had) with a ‘voicemail system’. If my love tried to get ahold of me, it was okay to miss a call. Because I was out buying cigarettes or something. Because cell phones were still not a general device people used. Obviously I would hate that I missed the call, but luckily he would leave me sweet messages on my machine. My current love once left me the sweetest voicemail message ever. But if you listened to it, it disappeared three days later. And I just wanted to listen to it on repeat for as long as I wanted. I had come up with a system that I would hang up before the end of the message so it would always be ‘new’ and never deleted and my repeat frenzy could continue.
”So we kissed, but after that I headed back home to the city I lived in”
My last example might be the sweetest. I was a college student and I had gone to a party with a high school friend of mine in the city she went to school and I had made out with a guy who had been in my high school class for years. I always thought he was sweet, but now that I was living the college life and ran into him again, it really opened my eyes. He was more than just sweet. So we kissed, but after that I headed back home to the city I lived in.
The Monday after the Saturday (because Saturday’s are for kissing) my college friends and I went out to go do ‘something’. I don’t remember what it was, all I know is I was home late. When I got back to my dorm a rookie of mine said, “There’s something for you at your door”. En there it was. A bouquet of roses with a hitchhiking sign with the city I lived in. My kissing candidate had hitchhiked to come see me.
Like with cell phones might be a lot easier, but romantic is a whole other story.
