Some day we'll have to explain things.
We'll have to explain why things are the way they are, what things used to be like, and how we intended things to be.
Will we meet our goals?
Will we fall short and have to explain why?
This is black and white. We either reach the goals we set and explain the how and why
or we don't and we explain the how we failed and the why not's?
One day you'll have to explain to a bright eyed, fast retaining, quick witted generation Z 'er that we used to all get a book delivered to our doors. You may have to stop and describe that a book is comprised of tree pulp flattened and hewn together with other woods, leathers, and plastics. upon these flattened pages there were words, pictures, numbers, and symbols printed with inks. Then you'll have to stop and describe printing and inks most likely. Some books were of higher physical quality and had gold leafing and lettering. They had full color images and leather bindings. This didn't necessarily mean the contents were more important, just that craftsmen were bought by those who believed the contents were.
I digress. Back to the bottom of the book category. You'll explain the paperback. The thing between the magazine and the hardcover. This will, no doubt, beg more descriptions. You'll be prepared for a long conversation.
You'll explain the most printed and monstrous paperback of them all.
The phone book!
Awe,ah, ahhhhh!
You will describe the annual ritual of receiving a new phone book and recycling or burning the old.
Your listener may stop you to assert that this is a wasteful practice. Your listener will be right, but that's just the way it was. You may describe the painstaking process of phone book deliveries, if you were one of the unlucky in the phone book delivery field. Literally tons of paper sat atop crates of wood, in the back of a steel fossil fuel powered, smoke making behemoth. You sat in the back with the books.You ran books to doorsteps one at a time and leaned them against the screens. You were chased by dogs and yelled at by old people. You had your ears chewed off (quick explanation of the old expression) by lonely Uni bomber types (regret using term and skip explanation). Some tried to pass off their old book on you. Whoa -oh there cowboy! Slow down! We
were in the delivery business. Never knew anything about the recycling end. You wonder if anyone does.
You got home and cracked open your very own copy, wondering if the new pizza place had a full page add with two dollars off if you saw this add. You took notes in the margins, highlighted numbers and names, dog eared pages, and sometimes ripped them out entirely. Many push button or rotary corded landlines hung on kitchen walls, sitting on room corner phone tables, or adorning hallway phone cubbie holes (only another hour or two of descriptions) had yellow, highlighted, heart and dagger doodled up pages taped or tacked to the walls next to them alongside a note card with important phone numbers on them. You will then regale Gen Z with tales of having to memorize four numbers, later seven, then eventually ten, per person. You will brag about having all your friends numbers stored in the computer that is in your brain. Dozens of them! You will at this point, no doubt, recall a number or two to prove your brain computer existed. You will probably only remember your own number, in other words, your parents number that was once yours and may still be theirs. You may also remember a close friends or two that you dialed or rotored hundreds or even thousands of times.
What were you talking about. The phone book! You'll recall that there were adds... mostly adds really. You may have had one of these adds and remembered the novelty of a one time advertisement that varied in cost based on it's size. You may have once dreamt of having a whole page some day. It's funny how some dreams are the biggest and most far fetched at the time and then eventually become completely obsolete and laughable.
You'll then remember that there was a second book. By god, there was! The white pages.
You'll muddle through the description of a book that were personal numbers vs business and make up a number about how many years were in between deliveries of this book. Surely it wasn't every year, was it?
Every other year? Sure, that's it.
Yes youngster Z, most people used to volunteer their number and even their address for the rest of the the city to see.
"Why. What the hell were you thinking? Were you all mad?!" they will ask.
Simple explanation.
Yes.
That was the only way people were able to find one another, reconnect, or take a gamble in those times. Also, when you met a girl from a different school and neighborhood, through the power of deduction and sometimes a few or dozen awkward phone calls, you could find out where she lived and have a direct line into her home where she could pretend to never be home.
Suddenly you remember the episode of Rosanne where Rosanne and Dan tried to go to Las Vegas and Becky and Darleen threw a party. Touch of Gray was playing and boys fought over Darleen for some reason. You remember things like that when you are remembering things like this.
At this point, your Gen Zster will have either passed out, which may have been your goal in the first place, or turned on their eye phone browser with out you noticing.
Yes. I said eye phone.
Just wait. It'll happen.
This has been a moment brought to you by the thought, "what the fuck happened to phone books. I mean, I know they are useless now, but just when did they disappear altogether." I would like one right now for kindling.
Maybe I should write a book... or two.
New direction for the book other guy! ;-)
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