Break On Through to the Other Line
Me and a few of the ladies of St. Patricks, Class of 1984
Just a random point of discussion that I have to extend into an infamous EOT blog rant.
Last night I had an 8th grade reunion with a handful of classmates after almost 25 years of love, life and growing up. It was a complete blast.
Since I recently (2008) had my 20 year high school reunion, it seemed like a great idea to go even further back into the Gully (my nickname) archive and reconnect with my Catholic school chums to get caught up and reconnected.
I wasn’t disappointed. As fellow EOT’er David Binkowski said after I Tweeted a picture of my female classmates, “Looks like you’re hanging with a bunch of MILFs.” It was true for the most part. All of them looked great and had really cool husbands to boot.
At a time when manhood is in serious trouble, it was refreshing to hang out with my classmates husbands all of whom were cool and normal guys.
As I was catching up with the class of 1984, one of my first crushes as a young guy, Crystal (I’ll spare her last name so you perverts don’t bother her), started talking about spending time on the phone as teens. She mentioned how I had called one night and used an emergency breakthrough to try and get to talk to her. I had a total 1983 flashback and was flabbergasted.
Do you remember the emergency breakthrough?Before the days of call waiting, caller ID and cell phones, if someone was on the phone, you got a busy signal. The only way you could interrupt a call was to call the operator and ask for an emergency breakthrough. I can’t remember what it cost but I do remember this boy’s raging hormones trying to make time with some of the plaid-skirt clad chicas from my escuela.
This was a detail I had completely forgotten. Me in all my technology-loving zest didn’t remember the low-tech way to cut in on another boy’s girl. Once I heard it, the memories flooded back. I remember doing it both successfully and unsuccessfully. Man, I was a stupid oaf back then. Classic.
My wife Elie remembers it but didn’t seem to be as excited to remember as I was. Again, me being a dork.
Then I started delving deeper. It was funny to think about how creative we had to be just a short 25 years ago. Today, our kids have so many ways to contact each other they’d never need something like emergency break though to get a hold of someone.
Do you have emergency breakthrough stories? If you do, please share in the comments. Or was I just a complete dork?
Follow Scott on Twitter @prgully or email him at scott@everyotherthursday.com. His personal blog, where he writes about public relations and social media, is www.scottgulbransen.com. Just don’t bitch to him because he has a very strong pimp hand.
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