The Phone Booth

Wiping off the car from the road dust collected on our travels, I observed a young man, perhaps 17, approach a phone booth placed between two trees next to our campsite.

He stopped a few feet from the booth and studied it for a long time. With a burst of energy presumably from having made the decision, he entered the door-less phone booth and picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. He paused for a while listening intently. Then he suddenly hung up the phone and backed out of the booth. He turned to me and asked with a little annoyance in his voice, “Do you know how to work this thing?”

I told him it wasn’t working as I had tried to use it also. It occurred to me that I haven’t used a phone booth in over 20 years—not since I got a cellphone. This young man probably never used one either but since there was no cellphone service in the camping preserve, he was motivated to use it.

Those of us old enough to think nothing of walking into a phone booth, deposit coins or enter a calling card number find it odd that the technically savvy youth of today would be a little helpless in the face of old technology.

My grandparents knew no other president than Franklin D. Roosevelt and felt lost when he died. My parents were children when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I was 9 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and not much older when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed. My children were too young to be affected by the Challenger explosion but were young adults when they witnessed the events of 9-11-01.

Our united experiences mark the consciousness of each generation and each tragedy or disaster sears itself into the collective minds of those who live through them. Social changes have historically taken time to be ingrained in each succeeding society but now changes are occurring more rapidly and affect a much wider area due to the Internet, social media and other technology.

We are ever growing closer as a global community as information casts its light into the technologically darkest areas of our planet.