Our Early ‘Techie’ Lives
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
My first cell phone was about 7 inches long.
But before that, as reporters we were issued pagers, which, for the information of some of you children, refer to those pocket-sized gadgets that allow you to receive the early example of what we now know as ‘’text’’ messages. Just about the biggest thrill one could get out of a pager was in adjusting the alarm mode: Do you want a beeping sound, a vibration, or both? Wow! For more thumb action, why not review your last 10 messages — two words at a time! But since pagers were basically just receivers, you still had to rely on that other telecom marvel — a.k.a. landline phone – if you wanted to reach another subscriber. You had to go through a live ‘’message handler’’ by dialing 141 (if I remember right). Once acknowledged, you state the pager number you want to contact, dictate your message within a limited number of characters, and then just hope the well-meaning guy on the other end of the line would correctly type ‘’4 to 8’’ and not ‘’48,’’ or ‘’the whole system’’ and not ‘’the hole sister.’’ We all had a great deal of fun.
But even before we got pagers, we worked the beats equipped with hand-held two-way radios, which I think would still look cool on our hips if we were using them to this day. There’s always something cocky about heavy things you can clip on your belt; a simple walk becomes an uneven swagger. What we had back then were not those ‘’mini,’’ toyish, ergonomic types you can almost hide in your palm, but those solid, half-kilo hunks you can club someone to death with. What’s more, with the radio, one can eavesdrop on the others as they ‘’shout’’ their ‘’2-Zero’’ (location), or just goof around across the airwaves. If you want to join in, you can always ‘’break’’ and throw in a witty, smart-alecky quip or two. Fruitful, hearty exchanges would always end with a ‘’roger’’ – which I suppose served as the short-wave equivalent of today’s smiley.
Until finally came the cell phones. My first purchase was a Nokia, an introductory model which I remember to be thicker than my own wrist and had keys bigger than what I now see on my TV remote control. There was a day when I inadvertently brought the TV remote pad to work, instead of the cell phone. But that’s another story.
Today yours truly is just happy with a phone that can snugly fit in the pocket – and which need not be of the fanciest model (so as not to tempt pickpockets). For some reason, I have gladly managed to keep my old Easycall pager as a relic from those relatively simpler, unhurried times. Looking back, I won’t be surprised if some of yesteryear’s message handlers, pioneers as they are of a bygone era, have since evolved, adapted, and risen to the upper echelons of today’s call centers.
And yes, to this day I sometimes still find myself replying to a text message not with a curt ‘’ok’’ or a cute ‘’J,’’ but with an earnest, wholehearted ‘’roger.’’
