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<font size=3>At 04:44 PM 9/29/03 -0400, Sachet wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite>I darn well make sure my daughter has the cell
phone whenever she leaves the house. It makes me breathe a little bit
easier to know that she isn't totally "alone" as she ventures
into the new world of driving, working and being wonderfully
independent.</blockquote><br>
Before the days of the ubiquitious cell phone, Gerry and I were
hams. We still are hams, in many senses of the word, but basically,
we are people who talk to other people on radios. We had radios in
our cars when they were VERY LARGE BOXES sitting in the middle of
everything, just waiting to draw blood on their sharp little
corners. I carried a radio in my purse. Large purse.
Large radio, about the size and weight of a brick, so that's what they
were called - bricks. As in, "Make sure you take the brick in
case you need something." <br>
<br>
When Maggie was taking drivers training, Gerry made her take amateur
radio classes also, so she had her license for both car and radio at the
same time. When she went out with her friends, she had not only a
radio in the car, but one in her purse also. Fortunately, by that
time the state of the art had progressed so her "brick" was
about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Her friends thought it was
more cool than Maggie did, (she called it the 'electronic leash'), but
there were several cases of someone's car breaking down and we went to
get them because we were the ones who could be reached. We also did
phone calls to parents of everyone in Maggie's pack when the game went
into overtime and all the kids knew they were going to be late coming
home.<br>
<br>
So now we all have cell phones and I love them. My new phone
has different ringers I can set, so Gerry's is a bugle call for a cavalry
charge, Liz is the Minute Waltz, and Maggie is Here We Go Round the
Mulberry Bush. I'm trying to find "Hail to the
Chief" to download for Gerry's ringer. And they don't
weight 7 pounds, like the first piece of comm equipment I hauled
around. Yep, I'm guilty and loving it.<br>
<br>
Theta </font><br>
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