I reach for my phone and there is nothing there. The panic sets in.
Me: “WHERE. IS. MY. PHONE.”
Son: “Seriously Mommy. Again?”
Me: “I gotta pull over to call Dad. Tell me if you see a payphone anywhere.”
I look over at him in the passenger’s seat and notice the perplexed look on his face as he stares straight ahead out of the window.
Son: [pause] “Mommy… What’s a payphone?”.
The funniest part is how I found myself saying “Back when I was your age, we didn’t have cell phones. We used phones connected to the wall and payphones when we were out and about. I used to keep quarters stocked in my car for emergencies…”. I might as well have said “Back in my day, a gallon of milk cost 3 pennies and we did homework by candlelight” because that was the look he gave me. He thinks I’m old. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with his best friend a while ago...
Friend: “Miss Liza, Have you heard this new song?” and he belts out lyrics to Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight' from back in the eighties.
Me: “That’s not a new song! What do you know about that? That’s back when I was a kid!!”
Friend: “It’s from the OLD DAYS back in the NINES???”
Oh my goodness. He said the “nines”, meaning the 1900’s, as if anything that falls into that century is the "the old days". I laughed for days. These kids constantly remind me that I’m not as young as I thought I was.
