Generation gap on phone calls
One of the biggest differences between me as a 15-year-old girl and my present-day 15-year-old daughter is our experience with phone calls. I loved them because a huge chunk of my interaction with friends happened on the phone. But back then, we teens had to work hard to have private conversations. For most of the 1980s, my family had exactly one phone in the house. It was mounted to the wall between the kitchen and dining room, within earshot of the living room. The phone was a color called “harvest gold,” which meant it looked like old mustard. It had a long squiggly cord that was forever tying itself into knots. But if I pulled hard and uncoiled a few […]