Judith Lacy's Jottings: Changing world of phone numbers

There was no wandering around the house chatting with these telephones. Photo / NZME

OPINION:

You know you are getting old when items from your childhood start popping up in museum exhibitions.

Post Offices of Whaingaroa is an exhibition at Raglan & District Museum. It's a fascinating look at how we used to communicate but I smiled when I saw the green rotary dial phone was labelled as from the 1960s.

Our phone on the farm in Patea in the 1980s was the same. We also had one at the cowshed. My brother and I could ring Mum if we needed but she often didn't hear the phone over the sounds of milking. She would use it to tell us to put the potatoes on to boil as she was on her way home.

Like many people, I can remember my phone number from then - 24059, but I have no idea of my home number now. A friend who lived on the other side of Patea, quite some distance from town, was still on a party-line - not an ideal system for preteen girls wanting to gossip and be silly. So many households sharing the same line meant it was often busy and was ripe for eavesdropping.

Toll calls are as cheap as chips compared to when I was a kid. If Pop answered the phone he would immediately give it to Gran, not because he didn't want to speak to us but because he didn't want us to waste what he viewed as unnecessary minutes.

Those rotary phones are ugly by today's standards but more aesthetically pleasing than the one Bell gave people a bell on.

As journalists, we are taught to make numbers as readable as possible. So it's 06 357 1111. The prefix indicates mid-central North Island and the 357 Hokowhitu. Ah, but how times have changed. I much prefer shopping in person but every now and again I find it's the only or best option. I was asked to put in my phone number. Whatever combination I tried I kept getting that webmaster's red pencil telling me I had put in an invalid number. Believe it or not, I do know my personal cellphone number by heart. After all, I've had it for more than 20 years.

In frustration, I rang the helpdesk number - brave I know. I didn't have to wait long but when the woman answered all I heard was click, clack as she continued to type. So I waited until she stopped. She didn't get why I wasn't keen to try and compete with such noise. Call centres are notorious at this, I don't want to overhear snippets of another operator's conversation. Gone are the days when reverence surrounded a telephone call and silence descended.

Anyway, back to the point. No, I didn't need to put in an international dialling code or a plus sign. In desperation, I asked about the spacing of the digits. Ah, no, no spacing. Just like that, I was now permitted to enter the magic world of ordering a photo print online.

I enjoy doing kids' quizzes as much as those for adults. Firstly, your chances of getting a perfect score are higher and secondly, you are likely to learn more about pop culture.

Recently, there was a photo of a red booth with a door and a multi-choice question asked which helpful device would you find inside. It just goes to show how much communicating over wire and radio waves has changed. More fun would have been a question about tin and string telephones. A fellow boarding school-ite told me how she would talk to her friend in the next dormitory using this a simple device through the windows. Until they got caught.

Perhaps the webmaster would insist you counted the number of baked beans that used to be in the tins and put that down as your phone number?