While walking out of a convenience store last evening I heard a woman to my right engaged in a 1-sided conversation. Figured it a cellphone conversation.

Nope.

By golly, she was using a PAYPHONE. There are so few PAYPHONES anymore (which is the reason I got a cellphone).

It's the 1st time in a long time I've seen someone using a PAYPHONE.

I was like Whoa - Dudette! You don't have a cellphone??? Everyone does!

Wished I had a camera, for posterity's sake.

When I was your age... Oh god...not already!!!

*cries while dyeing his gray in denial*

Which came first?
I think it's a cycle that fed itself!
People bought cellphones because (among other things) they could never find a pay phone.
Increase in cellphone usage decreased the demand for (and profitability of) pay phones.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I don't yet have gray...but I think my luck is soon to run out in that regard.

What's really strange now is looking back at 1980's movies...where are the cellphones? The BlackBerrys and iPods?? Seems they should have been then.

Watching movie characters running around looking for a PAYPHONE -- hilarious. Was it really just NOT so long ago?

I don't have a cellphone. Like many folks who do tech support for a living, we prefer to stay the @#$@ away from phones when we are not at work.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Back then, they were mostly in cars, for those who could afford them (or had a business need for them). Pagers were in pretty wide use, though.

The Filofax was the mark of the hyper-organized, Type A, interrupt-driven professional, although in terms of digital organizers, IIRC the Psion organizer was also in use back then.

The Sony Walkman was the the big thing in portable music.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

Let's not forget- Big Boombox carried on shoulder. Walk with a bebop. Wear headband to increase "cool" status.

Let's not forget- Big Boombox carried on shoulder. Walk with a bebop. Wear headband to increase "cool" status.

I believe there was a line from the 1986 movie Peggy Sue Got Married that went something like: "Computers got small but radios became enormous."

If you aren't familiar with the movie, a woman attending her high school reunion collapses and wakes up as a senior in high school. She was talking to the school nerd (a Bill Gates type character) describing the future.

we have plenty of pay phones here infact I have one right near my house!

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Great minds discuss ideas,average minds discuss events,small minds discuss people.Admiral Hyman Rickover.USN.

"Make the most of every day like it could be your last, enjoy each others companyas this will make good memories for when we pass". chrissy

The last time I was traveling and needed a payphone, I found several. But none of them worked right. (I was later told that this is standard for that location... which might be connected to the fact that this was a part of the USA where nobody can communicate face-to-face either because they all speak their own separate languages and not English, not even when they're trying to.) So as rare as you think pay phones are, just consider that correctly working ones must be even rarer.

Everyone has a cellphone? I don't. I have no need for one.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?