Pickles by Brian Crane for May 07, 2018

Actually, you bought an answering machine and waited for the message.

Oh, the good ol’ days

If Nelson is this shocked about not knowing who was calling until you answered the phone, wait til you tell him about party lines.

Thank God for caller ID

Yeah, but then you got the joy of hanging up on someone you didn’t want to talk to!

Caller ID still doesn’t work half of the time. “Caller Unknown” is one of my least favorite phrases.

I’m old enough to remember the “pre-answering machine” days. Actually, it was exciting for the phone to ring when you were a kid. Would it be someone for Mom? Or one of your friends calling to ask you to come out and play? Or, when we were teenagers, it might be a boy we liked…or your best friend calling to GOSSIP about the boy you liked! Now we look at caller I.D. and roll our eyes and think, “Ugh! I don’t want to talk to so-and-so!”

Remember during and immediately after WWII we had party lines with a suffix. Our number ended with a J.

Most of my calls are from “UNKNOWN NAME” or “POTENTIAL SPAM.” Even with caller I.D. I still don’t know who’s calling. And I still won’t answer those.

ive actually had my own number call my phone before according to caller ID

And there was a live person on the other end.

Keep in mind the days before answering machines (and even when answering machines first came out) that long distance phone calls were EXPENSIVE, so we didn’t get cold calls from folks unless they were local.

It wasn’t till phone calls became cheap to make that spam calls became more commonplace.

I not only remember the days before answering machines (never had one, they were for rich folk), I remember the days when we gave an actual number to the operator. Number, please!

It was terrible when the cord got tangled up with the crank on the side.

Maybe with the death of Net Neutrality the providers will charge the boiler rooms a dollar a call and help the customer. Yeah, right.

I remember, just barely, days before our telephone had a dial.

Who says technology ain’t grand?

^ like ^ (today’s strip, srsly)

Telemarketers were fun to tease when my kids were little. Especially @ Christmas time. I’d say to the marketer,“Oh, just a minute, he’s right here… Steven, Shane! ! Its another one of Santa’s elves, they want to know what you want for Christmas! !” My boys would gleefully run to the phone and then take turns babbling their wish list to the listener, or until the line went dead.

Or you ignored it then waited until you saw the person and they said “Hey, I tried calling you yesterday!”

Except at dinner time, no phones were answered. Family knew NOT to call so only could be someone we didn’t want to talk to.

Since there were no robocalls, you actually wanted to talk to the person who called.

How about the ones we get now? We don’t answer and they leave a “recorded message” which is silent when you pick it up. And there doesn’t seem to be anyway of getting rid of the message before answering it. I put the offending number on my banned list, but new ones keep cropping up.

NOMOROBO.com actually works most of the time. 1 ring, don’t answer; 2 rings, it’s a real call.

I have a simple solution. My cel phone is off until I need to use it. My family and friends know that and email me if they need to contact me, otherwise it may be 2 weeks before they hear from me.