911

Okay I was just visited by a friend who had many stories for me to have fun reminiscing about.  Of course, we talked about the old days and the teachers we use to have and ho ho ho merry christmas.  But then she came up with the grand slam, triple decker be all and end all: the emergency breakthrough.

She just happened to be talking about this generation versus our generation and the fact that her grandma still has a rotary phone when our kids don't even know what a payphone means.  And then all of a sudden she blurts out, well when Maria Basso did an emergency breakthrough...

And at first I am like what are you talking about ....your words are not English.

But then she goes and says, you know the days before call waiting when people would just YAP YAP YAP on the phone, you could call the OPERATOR and do an emergency breakthrough.

And then I remembered. Yes.  The Emergency breakthrough. I am sure I used it, and I am sure it cost my dad an extra fourteen billion schmeckles on his bill.  And then I thought... what did I consider an actual point of emergency in order to break through? At that age.   Here is my list:

Actual reasons for an Emergency breakthrough:

Fire.
Dead Body in the kitchen.
Child left unattended in the car.

Our reasons for doing an Emergency breakthrough in fifth grade:

Do you think he likes me?
Wanna go for a walk?
Should I wear blue shoes or red shoes to the dance tomorrow?

Yet we did it, and somehow our parents tolerated it.  Like, yes, of course I will stop talking to Colleague Sally in order to give the phone's EMERGENCY BREAKTHROUGH to my daughter so she can discuss the color of her toenails tomorrow.

What is this thing called the Phone? And Technology?