>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.
How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?
How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?
We can try to raise our kids with values that are consistent with the ones we grew up with. But trying to give them the same conditions because "it's what we did" doesn't always match up with reality.
On a regular basis I see people racing past cyclists, rolling coal at cyclists (I can't believe that's even a term now), blaring horns, and a number of other behaviors that fall under "threatening".
US vehicles, especially pickups, have outgrown a lot of rural roads that had their origins as footpaths and horse paths. Even with well-intentioned cyclists and drivers, it's often times a setup for conflict.
Drivers don’t pay attention and seem like they’re trying to kill you, but that feels more like recklessness than malice.
but you're not really going to see that in, say, Seattle
With a lot more difficulty.
"Who is calling?" "Hi mom practice is over come pick me up!"
"Ok, I'll come get you then"
If your kid can only participate in things that are planned well in advance, your kid is going to be missing out on ~80% of gatherings. Because everyone else is in the habit of making spontaneous plans, made possible by interconnectivity.
I think it's fine to give your 8th grader a flip phone. A third grader isn't "grabbing dinner after band practice".
For sports practice, I'd just take the sports bus home; the 30-60 minutes between the end of practice and the time the bus left was perfect for a little quiet reading or homework.
For band practice, I'd call my parents from the office phone, or plan to get a ride home from an older student who lived nearby, or just accept that I might miss out on something when mom picked me up at 6:30 and that's ok.
Payphones.
Time still exists. Payphones not so much.
And: payphones were ubiquitous. Car parks, bus stops, restaurants, bars, other businesses, random street corners, airports, bus depots, train stations. Probably several at a given high school at different locations. So long as you had loose change they were a reliable option. These started to disappear in the late 1990s, though support continued generally through the late aughts, and in certain locales (e.g., NYC) through the late 2010s.
There's some interesting technological anthropology in The Paper Chase, a film set at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s (released 1973), there is a payphone on the dorm floor, and it is the only phone available. That and a number of other elements date the film in ways that other set-dressing (costumes, architecture, cars) don't convey as emphatically.
There was no way of letting anyone know that you were running late once they were already underway to pick you up.