Pay Phones

Yesterday I was repaying someone the cost of my lunch; she had put our office luncheon on her credit card. When I paid her she (to my surprise) gave me back change, even though it was very little. I joked that now I’d have enough to make a pay call.

Or would I? We couldn’t decide what that cost of a call is anymore. I want to say I feel like it’s up to fifty cents...I’m pretty sure it was thirty-five cents around the time I stopped using them, as I recall the inconvenience of not being able to use just a quarter anymore (as I had for most of my use of pay phones). I bet our grandpas will tell us that they cost a dime or even a nickel even way back when. I would research how much a pay phone call is but I don’t even know where one is around here to look up the price on...and I live downtown!

I’m not all that sure anyone even uses pay phones anymore. Cell phones are killing them off. The lady from my office’s theory is that now pay phones are only used by those with bad credit. I’m sure some people do use them in places like airports and such, and also of course times they’ve forgotten their cell phones at home.

I think pay phones had a "golden age" in the pre-cell phone days of The Beeper. I never had a beeper (or even a cell phone until two years ago) but I remember being out with friends when suddenly they’d jump up saying, "Oh, I just got beeped! We have to go find a pay phone!!!" What was happening is that as people were getting pages (as they hadn’t before the beepers were around), they were now specifically seeking out pay phones in order to purchase a call when they got their beeper they wouldn’t have because they wouldn’t have known anyone was trying to call them without the beeper; there were now just more reasons to make a call. On a side note, that’s one of the things I found rude about beepers: if you were out with friends you would stop what you were doing to get in touch with other friends (which never was for anything important)....little did I know the inconsiderateness that would come about with cell phones...but I digress. Anyway, there must have been big pay days for the pay phone companies back then. When cell phones came about they eliminated the need to find those pay phones, or use of them at all. Cell phones killed beepers as well.

I remember my own uses for pay phones. As caller IDs were getting more popular, if for whatever reason I didn’t want a person to know it was me that was calling (I’m very sneaky), I would go get in my car and drive to a nearby pay phone and make the call from there. That way it wouldn’t be my last name showing up in the caller ID.

My most popular use for pay phones would simply be calling home if I needed a ride. I get nostalgia everytime I drive past the certain rest stop on the highway that the wrestling team bus would stop at on the way to the high school to call home and tell our parents that we were now at the fifteen minute point from the high school and to come pick us up. (On another side note, there was a McDonald’s in that rest stop and once in a while some fat kid would buy the forbidden fast food and *try* to sneak it past Coach - always with humorous results!) One time instead of stopping coach let us all use his cell phone...it was the first time I had ever used a cell phone...I thought it was broke; God, I didn’t know you had to hit "Send"!

For the most part we stopped at that rest stop to make calls. I had my own little method with my mom (and I know I’m not the only one). I’d call 1-800-Collect, and when it came time to say my name, my name was "mompickmeup". Or, I would say my name but when she heard "T.J." she would just reject charges and know to come get me. With tactics like these, 1-800-collect, and not just cell phones, contributed (or should I say are contributing...there are still some) to the demise of the pay phone. Blame Carrot Top.