Young people have no idea …

Not only talking on the phone, but having no idea who was calling.

I had a friend in middle school whose house screened calls and it was so bizarre at the time, they were the only people I knew who did that, and now it is basically what everyone does. If you knew them you'd tell the answering machine who you were and they usually picked up pretty fast. If they didn't know you, I guess they'd debate calling you back.

For the most part, we all just answered the phone and had no idea who was calling. Even those of us who remember that can't imagine it now! It is definitely a nice advance. One time in my early reporter days a prep athlete called me at home on a Sunday because she didn't like how I phrased a play from a game the day before in the paper. Yeah, I was listed in the phonebook, and no I didn't have caller ID, which most probably had at that time. Still the thing of nightmares.

I don't even answer the phone now if it is someone I know.

 

Has anyone mentioned listening to the radio on snowy mornings to hear if they announced your school’s number?

 

That is a huge change. We used to be excited about who may be calling. Or we would anxiously check our answering machine the second we got home. Now our best friend can be calling and we look at our phone and think "why aren't you just texting?"

Of course, we weren't flooded by telemarketers back in the day, so there was a 95 percent chance the person calling was someone you or someone in the house wanted to talk to.

 

I'm so damn old I once called one of those hotlines to get baseball scores - my parents wanted to wring my neck over it.

 

That was the best and/or worst, depending on the outcome.

And as the son of a substitute teacher, I often knew the bad news before anyone else. My bedroom was next to my parents' bedroom and I'd hear the phone ring. After silently praying it was a wrong number or a telemarketer inexplicably calling at 7 AM, I'd hear my Mom's feet hit the floor from the bed. Then those five awful words: "(Brother and sister), get up."

 

There were no good options for seeing cancellations.

The all-news stations might've fit in 10 minutes of news, if that, in each half-hour block. The rest of the time was reading named.

Then there were the TV stations that did their full screen scroll every 15 minutes or so during the AM newscasts. That thing would move so fast it was easy to miss your town. The lower-third crawl now is a bit better, but not a ton.

 

We had bingo games with either the makes and colors of cars or the states on the license plates.

To this day I still notice license plates from the other side of the country when I’m traveling on a highway!

 

Same here. I love license plates. Before I got married, I used them as artwork for the living room in my bachelor pad. Some of them are absolutely gorgeous when you clean them up, and they have a reflective sheen you never notice until the light hits them just right.
Probably had close to 100 of them lining the walls. Didn't have every state represented, but there were more than 40. It was a great conversation starter whenever somebody came over. Once I got one of those cool yellow and red New Mexico plates on a trip out west I was hooked. I took a lot of road trips back in those days and I'd make it a point to hit up junkyards for old plates.
Still have them in a box in the attic since my wife won't let me hang them up.

 

We still play the license plate game...it begins whenever we take our summer vacation and we have the subsequent 12 months to find all 50 states. There's apps for that shit and everything! As a geography nerd who did school projects on the 50 states in elementary school, my favorite part is trying to guess the capitals. So far on this cycle I've only missed Minnesota and maybe one or two others I can't remember. Fucking St. Paul!

The only state we're missing this cycle is Hawaii. We actually got Hawaii (and thus all 50) one year. My wife saw the Hawaii car on a street near her school, which is about 5,000 miles from Hawaii. She was understandably quite excited to call and inform me. I did the same when I saw South Dakota on a bridge.

 

By the time I was in high school our school district had a cable access channel on the local system. If school was going to be canceled, they usually made the call by about midnight and put the message up on the channel. Finding out that trick was a game changer.
Didn't save me during one Nor'easter my sophomore year, though. I somehow did not get the word that we had a two-hour delay and eventually a cancellation. My mom dropped me off at school and when I went in I was the only one there. A janitor told me about the delay, but Mom was long gone by that point and I had to walk home. It was only about a half-mile, but in 40 mph wind and rain it was not very fun.

 

I had about 40, tacked on the wall of my garage. Was kindly asked to take them down. I think they are in the garage someplace.

 

Had an incident at work a few weeks back where some 20-somethings a.) couldn't figure out how to address an envelope and b.) couldn't figure out how to fill out a check.

B, I kinda understand. Have they ever received a check?

A, WTF? Your granny never sent you a birthday card?