Payphone Romance

Do you remember the payphone?

I was walking around the mall the other day and I realized that payphones are incredibly rare these days. They aren’t as common place as they used to be. Understandable considering how everyone uses mobile phones these days. I suspect that most people who are currently in their early twenties have had little contact with these clunky old things.

The payphone brings back memories of a very distinct age in our modern society.

An age where people actually memorize the phone numbers of the people they constantly talked to… or carried little phone books around. These days everything in stored in the phone memory. How many numbers do YOU know by heart? I can count less than 5. I don’t even know my own house number actually. Back then, everyone knew these numbers; house number, parents office number, best friends number, classmates numbers, 999, and of number one importance, Pizza Hut. :-P

It was also an age where the pay phone was the only real viable alternative when you wanted to make a private call to that all important special someone. Talking from your house phone was kinda difficult because your parents will scream at the phone bill would sky rocket, your siblings will tease you and make stupid kissing faces, and someone will always be wanting to make a call just when the conversation starts to heat up. This results in you often having to hide in some dark corner of the house somewhere with the phone cords fully extended. It was either that or the payphone.

I remember that making a trip to the payphone to call that special someone was quite an interesting experience. It was a very deliberate act. Payphones were a bit like watering holes for lovers then… You had to actually plan and prepare and hope for a bit of divine intervention whenever you wanted to call from a pay phone.

For one, you needed to identify where all the payphones in the neighbourhood were. If one phone booth had a particular long line (yes believe it or not, people actually queued up to make a phone call those days), you needed to know where was the next nearest ones. I’m not joking. I used to know exactly where each of these phone booths was. Some days, there would be no one. Other days, you go booth to booth only to find half a dozen people waiting in line. Inevitably, you would have to queue at one point or another. The thing you almost never do, is turn back. You set out to make a call, and you roam the neighbourhood until you accomplish your mission.

Secondly, you needed to actually collect coins. Everyone hates coins these days, but in pay phone days coins were a commodity. You may think of coins as just extra weight to your pants now, but back then coins were equivalent to airtime with your . Those days, we knew exactly how long a 20 cent coin would last you during a call and how much you needed to talk. You’d make it a conscious effort to collect as much coins as you could through the day just so you’d have enough to talk later. Failing which, you’d have to prematurely declare to your bf/gf/best friend that the conversation needs to come to an end because you are down to your last coin.

Then there were the crazy, erratic payphones themselves. After rounding the neighbourhood long enough, you roughly know which are the ‘well behaving’ phones, which are the crappy ones with poor speakers, which ones are under repair, which ones have the quietest surroundings, which ones had the least amount of people and which ones never want to take your money. Some phones eat your coin but never show the credit. Some never give you back your change when you hang up. This usually leads to the typical ‘banging-and-cursing-at-the-phone’ behavior. Some phones just have an attitude problem and will spit out all the coins you put in. Only after feeding the same coin about 5 times does it finally take it. This sometimes results in the call being ended suddenly, ruining your mojo and forcing you to dial all over again, which cost more. Stupid phone.

Let’s not forget the rain. On days that you plan to make that call to that special someone, you’d find yourself actually praying for good weather. And you’d just be crushed on days that it did rain because it meant that you’d have to wait a few more hours or till the next day before you could make your call. I think that’s practically unimaginable these days; that the weather might literally affect your love life.

With mobile phones, everything is so convenient these days. It’s a good thing I supposed. It takes 5 minutes to write an email, and 5 seconds to make a call. Back then, when you had a crush on someone, going out to make that call to that person was an experience in itself; from the deliberate collecting of the coins, to the nervous walk to the phone booth, to the agony of waiting in line or searching for the right phone, to the thrill of finally dialing and getting through, to the sadness of going down to your last coin, to the sweet goodbye as you hear the final beeps telling you your time is up, to the contented walk back home again.

Calling someone special from a payphone used to be an event, not an afterthought. And the sweetest part is, the person you call usually knows this. When they receive your call and know that you’re talking from a payhone, they know that you made this big special effort just to be able to talk to them freely and intimately…. And it kinda sends out a strong non-verbal message. I mean, obviously they know you weren’t going through all this special effort and difficulty just to know what they were watching on TV or what they ate for dinner…….geddit? It’s something like a modern day equivalent of scaling a small mountain to pick a lady’s favourite flower… only less cool.

;-)


But hold your horses OK guys… don’t start collecting coins and calling from payphones just yet. I don’t think it’s quite the same anymore. Girls these days won’t start to think it was sweet if you start calling from a payphone. Instead, they’ll get the impression that you’re constantly running out of airtime credit, or you haven’t been paying your bills. Both of which points to either a poor ability to manage money or a very shallow pocket. Not quite the way to impress the ladies…

I’d love to suggest something, but I don’t think there’s an equivalent anymore. Everything’s too easy and convenient these days. In fact, it’s so convenient that  a call or sms is mostly expected. You’d have a hard time explaining why you have not been in touch. I know of women who get angry when they don’t receive any word or call from their knight in shining armour. “What, you can’t even send me a simple message? Don’t you even think about me? Am I not even worth a 15 cent SMS? Just goes to show how important I am to you! Hmmphh!”

For once my brothers, convenience is the enemy.