Remember then? What was yours?

[hunter]

20. When I was in elementary school we had five digit phone numbers and party lines.

All our neighbors and schoolmates had phone numbers that started with "5" so a kid only had to remember four digits. We didn't have to concern ourselves with the prefix. Making an expensive long distance call wasn't something children were allowed to do.

About the time I started middle school our city's telephone exchange was modernized and we had to dial all seven numbers. Me and my siblings memorized the prefixes as numbers. We considered the named prefixes something odd only our grandmother's used.

Unlike our grandmothers, our grandfathers would never call just to chat. They only called when something horrible had happened -- relatives getting killed in automobile crashes, that sort of thing.

Our great grandmothers simply did not allow children to touch a telephone. I suppose they considered telephones a tool of the devil. You never knew if Satan himself might be calling.