Pne has been thinking about anachronisms in speech lately.

[conuly]

Clicky!

I was thinking about that post *twice* today, both because of swimming.

See, we caved and signed the nieces up at the YMCA so they can take swimming lessons. I mean, you can take the lessons without being a member, but it's twice as much. And in order to make the membership pay off they're also taking Tae Kwon Do and Ana is doing a Double Dutch class after her swimming. (Actually, if we get our act together we may be eligible for financial aid, but that's beside the point right now.)

Because Evangeline is under 6, she and Ana aren't in the same swimming class. This is very annoying, because Evangeline's class starts at 3:30 and only runs for half an hour. There is no earthly way we can make it on time taking the bus, so instead we have to shell out $8 for car service. You can't miss the first 10 minutes of a 30 minute class!

Anyway, today we were in the car on this beautiful day, and Ana, recognizing the beauty of this day, asked me to "crank down the window".

1. I don't say that, I say "open the window" or very maybe "roll down the window", but I don't think I've said "roll down the window" in a while. Hard to tell now that I'm thinking about it!

2. To my knowledge, Ana and Evangeline have been in a car with a crank for the window exactly once. It was a momentous occasion.

So I noticed this, commented on it, and resolved to post about it... which I've just done.

At the Y I quickly got Evangeline changed (by this I mean I stood there while Evangeline changed her clothes. I did NOT, like some people, dress her like a doll. I don't know why people do that to their four and five year olds), ran her through the shower, waved to her teacher, and skedaddled. (For some reason, scads of other grown-ups hang around the tiny window at the other end of the pool to watch. Bringing a book seems more sensible to me, I don't know.)

Or I meant to skedaddle (funny looking word), anyway, back to the waiting room where I could make sure Ana finished her homework... but I was too busy staring at the emergency phone.

The emergency phone is red, and it has a red sign next to it with the words "Emergency phone Dial 911" written in white. The words are, swear to god, written over the image of an actual phone dial. Like, for a rotary phone!

In my life, I can recall seeing only ONE rotary phone, and it was nearly obsolete then, but you don't expect NYC public schools to throw out perfectly good phones just because they're old, do you? So my jaw kinda dropped a little and I groped for my own phone to take a pic. Alas, I'd left it with Ana, so that didn't happen, but it will next week! (I may also open the box to see if the phone matches the image, but I don't know, people may not approve of my curiosity.)

Comments

[redbird]

On my new cell phone (not a "smart" phone, something I got for $20 at the drugstore), the icon for checking voicemail is a cassette tape.

My aunt has a rotary wall phone, but it's been on that wall since she moved in, and these days she may answer using that extension, but will call using a touch-tone phone on the same line. (I think she moved into that apartment when touch-tone was new, and cost extra every month.)

[dreamingpixels]

When I was a little kid, we had a rotary phone in my house up until I was six, I think - when we got a touch-tone phone. We had to switch it from tone to dial, though, because apparently our phone line wasn't capable of handling touch tone phones until years later. It was so weird dialing a number and hearing all the little clicks while you waited for the call to go through!

(And I think my mom still actually has that phone - I think it might be buried under some papers and junk on her desk. XD )

[conuly]

On my new cell phone (not a "smart" phone, something I got for $20 at the drugstore), the icon for checking voicemail is a cassette tape.

That strikes me as even more anachronistic than the rotary dial, for some reason, even though it took me ages to stop saying "answering machine" when everybody else was saying "voice mail" already.

[steorra]

My family had a rotary phone until at least the mid 1990s - likely late 1990s. We would refer to it as the 'dial phone'.

[mc776]

Sometimes it's reversed: people talk about "firing" arrows and crossbows all the time.

And I still say "answering machine", though I personally justify it in the fact that very few people who must interact with voice mail ever intend to actually leave a recorded message so much as intend to talk to a person only to find that the other side has delegated the task of answering the phone to a machine. :V

[steorra]

I still have a physical answering machine, but it uses electronic recording, not a cassette.

[pne]

Sometimes it's reversed: people talk about "firing" arrows and crossbows all the time.

That is an interesting reversal.

[mc776]

Take a look at the download button.

[conuly]

:)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

That's how most of the interesting phrases in any language get created, isn't it? "The pot calling the kettle black" - completely understandable when both were metal items that sat on a wood fire to be heated, and got covered in soot as a result, less relevant in a modern kitchen.

[conuly]

You know what I have a fondness for? The word shuttle. It may not be the strangest history of a word ever, but I like it.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

that is one reason i wanted to learn to make lace, i get to use a shuttle.

our car is from 2008 and it has crank windows and i love it.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I really, really remember rotary phones. I remember that it takes noticeably longer to dial a nine than a one. I have a push button phone in my kitchen, but it is a landline, corded phone, which apparently is becoming less common.

I also remember that you used to be able to hang up the phone if you weren't the person who made the call and then pick up on another extension without losing the connection. But they stopped that for safety reasons. That's good, but it was convenient to be able to just hang up and then pick up. Then there was all the fussing with, I'll pick up there, and then go hang up here or have someone hang it up for me here, when I want to switch locations.

Which, I guess, doesn't matter to most people now since most phones are cordless.

Yesterday a friend complained when my housemate commented about grabbing his phone. Stating that he shouldn't call it by such an outmoded term, and that he's seen my housemate use it to make a call maybe twice or so, when it was new and that function was still exciting. But he was grabbing it to change the music, and the fact that it can make phone calls is really not the most significant thing about the device.

Not anachronisms.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

I last had a dial phone in 2003, it stayed during the divorce.

My current car has crank windows, manual door locks, etc.

My home stove (propane) soots up pans fairly consistently.

I use a shuttle on my inkle loom. (And a shed sword, too. Hah.)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I also remember that you used to be able to hang up the phone if you weren't the person who made the call and then pick up on another extension without losing the connection. But they stopped that for safety reasons.

Oooh, can you not do that any more in the US? My parents would hate that, they still do it all the time. They only have one cordless phone, the study and bedroom phones are tethered. So sometimes when I visit they walk the phone to each other, but other times they just swap phones. I'm sure they sometimes hang up before they pick up. We also had a rotary long enough into the 90s that I remember it reasonably clearly. We tend to hang onto technology until it breaks, I suppose.

[leora.livejournal.com]

It was deemed too dangerous. If you intend harm to a household, you can call them. Once they pick up, you simply don't hang up, and they cannot end the call to make a new call and call for help.

Of course, these days most families would have some other way to call for help, like a cell phone. But at the time they changed it most households just had one landline and that was it. So, the ability to choose to terminate a call was deemed too important for safety.

Even without malice, it could be an issue. For example, if somebody called you and then had a medical emergency that caused them to collapse and they couldn't hang up, and you couldn't call emergency services on their behalf. You'd have to run to a neighbor to do it.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I can absolutely see how it is safer (in multiple ways) to be able to terminate the call from the receiving end. Or even without safety, just if the caller doesn't quite hang up the phone properly. I have to transcribe messages from our answerphone at work and it's not uncommon that we get a few of minutes of low conversation in the background when people fail to hang up correctly. I don't listen, obviously, but I can tell how long it is by skipping to the last seconds of the message and listening to what's on tv in the background.

Maybe they have fixed this problem in the UK too and I just didn't realise. I live alone in a one bedroom flat with two portable handsets. It's not exactly come up for me lately!