This got me thinking about all the cell phones I have had through the year, so I thought I would reminisce here...

My first experience with a cell phone was in 1989.  I was working on a special project for ABC TV and we were given a cell phone to use for the project.  Yup, one cellphone for us all the share!  LOL  The thing was HUGE!  If I remember right it weighted 24 ounces!  In other words go get 2 cans of soda and duct tape them together and Viola, you would have a pretty good idea of how much the thing weighed!  (Imagine carrying that in your purse!) My boss (Who was a blast!) LOVED this little toy!  We kept it plugged in under his desk and it quickly became nicknamed the "shoe phone"  not only because it was as big as his shoe, but because when someone would call it the ring sounded like it was coming from his shoe under the desk!  Oh the laughs we got out of that!  (You have to keep in mind basically no one had ever seen a cellphone at the time so this was quite a novelty! So we made sure that anytime someone new was in his office we would all call the shoe phone!  As I think back about it that crazy phone really was bad for office productivity!  LOL)  So besides making the phone ring under the desk my boss also loved to send me out on errands carrying this mammoth thing!  One trip I remember in particular was when he sent me to the office supply store and then had me running around the store reading all the labels on office supplies to him over the phone.  Of course everyone was looking at me because again, barely anyone had ever seen a cellphone and they all thought I was nuts talking on a phone in the middle of the store!  (It’s hard to believe today, huh???) I kept telling him I needed to go because my arm had a major cramp in it holding up that HUGE phone.  What fun memories!  LOL   You can see a picture of it HERE. 

Fast forward to 1991.  This was the year I got my first cellphone!  Honestly, when I got my first cellphone I didn't know anyone else that had one.  It was quite extravagant!  But, Los Angeles had been having a rash of carjackings and I actually had someone try to run me off the road one night on my way home from work.  (It was really the only scary moment I had in the 9 years I lived in L.A.)  Add that to the fact that a friend of mine at work had a home invasion robbery,  before the term was coined and I was just ready for a phone!  Now back then there were not cellphone stores!  In order to get a cellphone you had to make an appointment with  a cellphone broker.  I called the guy up and made an appointment for him to meet me at my work.  He came out with a selection of phones he thought I might like.  (It kind of reminded me of the old cartoons of the guy in a trench coat saying “Hey, mister you wanna buy a watch?  LOL)  So he brought out the phones and I bought one.  I paid $200.00 for my first cellphone!  (Yep, there were NO free phones back then!)  And my first contract was $30.00 a month and included NO free minutes!  That's right!  I paid $30.00 a month just to have the phone!  If I made any calls I paid between .40 cents  and $1.00 per minute!  Needless to say that phone lasted a loooooong time because I rarely ever made a call on it!  Oh, size wise this one was much smaller!  It was about the size of the average home cordless phone today!  You can see a picture of it HERE, it's #1.  Mine also had a antenna that was about a foot long that I had to screw on it to use it.  It doesn't show that in the picture.

In 1994 when my oldest son was born we were very thankful to have that cellphone!  The hospital where he was born had no phone service because there had been a flood in the computer room and all the phones were out.  The Doctors were all given cellphones.  Most patients didn't have cellphones.  I remember letting the lady in the bed next to me use my phone to call her mother and tell her she had her baby.  We were in the hospital a total of 10 days and our cellphone bill was $500.00 that month!  YIKES!  It was not like we were on the phone a lot either!  It just adds up fast when you are paying by the minute!

In 1995 we got rid of the cellphone!  (Can you even imagine now going back to NOT having a cellphone??? It really wasn't that big of deal at the time since we rarely ever made a call on the cellphone because of the HUGE cost involved.  It was truly just there for safety sake.) I had quit work to stay home with our oldest and the cellphone was a luxury we couldn't afford.  It was 4 years before we had a cellphone again!  Although, my husband did have a pager for work during this time. 

It was 2000 when I got a cellphone again. I remember because I was pregnant with my daughter and I worried about wearing the cellphone on the waist band on my maternity pants.  I was hoping I wasn’t frying the babies little brain!  LOL  By then they were doing free phones with a 2 year contract.  I remember though that the when I first got that cellphone the small Northern California town we lived in didn't have any cell service.  So the phone was only good if we went into the city.  It wasn't long after we got that phone though that we got cell service in town.

Then in 2004 when we moved to Las Vegas I went to using my cellphone as my exclusive phone.  We did have a home phone in Las Vegas, but I never gave the number out to anyone.  It was just in case of an emergency.  (My cousin who was a policeman advised us against going to cellphones only because at the time 911 didn’t have the ability to track a cellphone and he said if one of the kids called 911 from the house phone they would know where we were.)

When we moved earlier this year we decided we no longer needed a home phone.  (911 can track all cellphones now.) That was when we got my oldest son a cellphone.  (Actually he got dad's old one and dad got a new one.) So now we are a 3 cellphone family!  It is hard to imagine life without cellphones now!  When my son broke his this weekend I wanted to get out and get him a new one ASAP!  I am so use to being able to be in contact with him at any given moment, not that he's away from me much, but what if I need to call him to dinner?  I mean you don't expect me to walk all the way to his room and actually talk to him face to face do you? LOL 

I hope all you young whipper-snappers enjoyed this old timers stroll down memory lane!

LOL

Happy Homeschooling,

Jamin