May I make two other observations: in my free-range childhood, there were pay phones all around, where you could call home if you ran into a problem (or emergency). Pay phones, if not obsolete, are rare and, probably not in a place where it’s needed in a pinch.
Second … we use to memorize the important phone numbers. Muscle-memory helped us to retain it. Ironically, my adult sons still know my cell number by memory. The phone numbers they got from their first phones that we bought them (and they still use) … I don’t remember their numbers. They were on auto dial. My husband’s cell phone number from work (which he has kept in his retirement) … I use to know it by heart. Same thing … because of auto dial, I haven’t had to physically dial it in many years … and I no longer remember it.
Brilliant! One thing I might ask the author to consider is the difference in the levels of community between "then" and "now".
When her mom let her walk to school as a kindergartner, when all of us kids played after school unsupervised until the porch light came on, we were very much part of a community that could be relied on to help out in an emergency. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, and that the most one could hope for in some "communities" is that someone would call 911. And of course this devolves into someone calling Child Protective Services if some child they don't think is old enough is enjoying a little independence.
Just a part of the larger social context that I thought might be worth exploring.
May I make two other observations: in my free-range childhood, there were pay phones all around, where you could call home if you ran into a problem (or emergency). Pay phones, if not obsolete, are rare and, probably not in a place where it’s needed in a pinch.
Second … we use to memorize the important phone numbers. Muscle-memory helped us to retain it. Ironically, my adult sons still know my cell number by memory. The phone numbers they got from their first phones that we bought them (and they still use) … I don’t remember their numbers. They were on auto dial. My husband’s cell phone number from work (which he has kept in his retirement) … I use to know it by heart. Same thing … because of auto dial, I haven’t had to physically dial it in many years … and I no longer remember it.
Brilliant! One thing I might ask the author to consider is the difference in the levels of community between "then" and "now".
When her mom let her walk to school as a kindergartner, when all of us kids played after school unsupervised until the porch light came on, we were very much part of a community that could be relied on to help out in an emergency. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, and that the most one could hope for in some "communities" is that someone would call 911. And of course this devolves into someone calling Child Protective Services if some child they don't think is old enough is enjoying a little independence.
Just a part of the larger social context that I thought might be worth exploring.