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Call me! BY BETHANY LEE
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what3words
here are four phone numbers from my youth that are still firmly lodged in my memory bank. All of them are just seven magical digits, you didn’t have to dial the area code back then. My first memorable phone number was in Brampton, when I fell in love with phone chatter as a 10-year-old girl on the cusp of becoming a teenager. The next phone number, the one around the longest, was the one Bell gave us when my family landed in East Garafraxa. In the minky black nights of life on a farm, the phone was sometimes all there was. The next one was the coolest. Entirely composed of 7s and 8s – it rolled off my tongue. I didn’t get to be the giver of this number. It was my parents’ when they moved for a time to Fergus. Best number ever!
Telecommunications has come a long way since the days of long, curly phone cords and brain blaster cell phones. Now we connect from anywhere on the planet. But what happens when you get turned around or need to tell someone your location? Use the what3words app. Genius mapmakers have divided the world into 3-metre squares and given each square a unique combination of three words. what3words addresses are easy to say and share, and as accurate as GPS coordinates. You might consider having your kids learn the app’s three-word combinations for important addresses – like home, school or a safe meeting place. www.what3words.com
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ILLUS TR ATION BY SHEL AGH ARMS TRONG
And finally, going way back in the archives, my grand parents’ phone number in Toronto. Probably the first number I ever dialled on my own. Each of those phone numbers was a connection to the outside world. They came rushing back to me when I was doing some cleaning recently and found a tiny leather address book. My Aunt Diane gave it to me around the time I was dialing from that first Brampton number. The book was about the size of a deck of cards, and was from Roots! I remember she gave me a tank top from Roots at that time as well, and I painted my green binder with the Roots logo, using Wite-Out. The epitome of Canadian cool. Before I opened the little creaky leather book, I tested my memory for those numbers. Could I still remember them? I could. They were lyrical to me. Back then, it was a feat of memory to remember your friends’ numbers or memorize your boyfriend’s number (even before he knew he was in your book with stars and hearts beside his name).
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Dialling the old rotary phones was deliciously anticipatory – waiting for the long whirrrrrrrr as the higher numbers were dialled and generally cursing the phone numbers containing eights and nines! How impatient we were to get through, our pencils ready above the circular slot of the next number so we didn’t rough up our nails. And then, sometimes, surprise! Voices on the party line you shared with your rural neighbours. “Hang up until we’re done our conversation!” “Oh, okay!” – and then pretending to hang up, but eavesdropping until the dog barked in the background and you were called out for listening. Later, when tech improved, the rotary phone changed in most households to a 12-button key pad. Fun and funky phones of the ’80s and ’90s were turquoise, pink, translucent like the Swatch watches of the day, or lit up with very large buttons suitable for an MTV veejay calling Max Headroom. It was fun and exciting when new phones came out in new styles. Tech became smaller and more
