Waxing Nostalgic

I remember being a teen in the early 90's and carrying a controversial peice of equipment called a "Pager." Another nickname for this device was a "Beeper." Back then, I had a pager because I worked after school and looking back, I don't know why it was even important to have one, but my mother liked the idea that she could get a hold of me and I felt cool with a piece of plastic that held a battery and had a screen with a light and it would vibrate when someone was trying to reach me. It was my good friend, Carmichael Simon, who encouraged me to get one. He had one and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that we could page each other. He was #1 in the nation with some form of Karate and I worked as a bus boy at the Restaurant in Comfort Inn and Conference Center in Bowie. Also at that time in my life, I met a cool kid named, Ryan Schneider. One day, he invited me over to his house and his mother, Sheila, opened the door. I asked if Ryan was home (as that seemed an appropriate thing to say) and her first words to me were, "Who are you?" I said my name and told her I was a friend of Ryan's from school and her next response was, "Are you a drug dealer?" I was astonished at how cold and bold this lady was. I didn't realize at that second that she was looking at my pager. My response was "No" yet I was still mildly in shock by the way this woman was talking to me. She then said that she saw my pager and assumed I was a drug dealer. "Why would I have a pager unless I was a drug dealer?" Fast Foward to 2007 for a moment. Pagers are in museams and every kid young or old had a cell phone. Were Carmichael and I pioneers of a youth communication movement....??? No, but it was cool to be able to page each other. Back to my story - Sheila couldn't really accept the reality that I wasn't selling drugs, even though I've never touched them and after a few more judgmental questions, including, "Why didn't you use the side door?" As if I was a regular visitor at that point and should've known the family protocol for passage into the Schneider household. As it turned out, Sheila realized over time that I was just a normal kid who didn't sell drugs and lived with values that were far different than she was used too. I can't tell you how she couldn't possibly believe that I was a real Republican. Oy...Mrs. Schneider sure knew how to give me a hard time. I did enjoy the time period I spent hanging with Ryan though. We had a pretty good group of friends who spent a lot of time just laughing. Ryan and Chad Schneider; Joe "Gravy train" Graham and Brad Moser...I often wonder, what ever happened to those guys?

This story itself brings back some names that at the time, one would have thought would still be well known today. Do you remember....Metrocall; Mobilecomm; Startac; CellOne; Sprint Spectrum; Flex Technology or those text pagers that you could read the text but not respond with text? Back then, there was no such thing as free nights and weekends or roll over minutes. You were lucky to get a plan with any free minutes at all. Roaming was the nuclear holocost of cell phone travel. You could end up spending your life savings on a call that you made outside of your calling area....even though you only spoke for 20 mins. I don't think there was a strip mall in the country that didn't have a pager/cell phone store.

Now, I own a cell phone that is 100 times more advanced then any of the old pagers and cell phones I had in the past....and I all I want to do with it is throw it against a wall and watch it break into pieces. The Motorola V551 from Cingular...an example of good technology stuffed into a worthless device. It would be like sticking a top notch GPS Navigation System, heated leather power seats with memory and separate driver and passenger heat/cool controls in an 87 Yugo. I guess I should mention that my parents bought a Yugo back in 1988. My parents gave all the late 80's soccer parents something to laugh at.