Remember when phone calls were made at night or on the weekend because rates were cheaper?

My daughter called tonight at just about dinner time. I think she knew it was dinner time and was calling to interrupt in order to make a complaint.

"How come you didn't call me this weekend!?"

"Well, was I supposed to call you this weekend?"

You ALWAYS call me on the weekend, usually on Sunday!" was her tart replay. She followed with, "You always used to call on the weekend because it was cheaper, don't you remember?"

Oh, yes!! I remember! Rates were cheaper on weekends, nights and holidays. They were so much cheaper that everyone made the family calls at that time. If you received a family member's call during the week you had this feeling of dread.

Somebody died! Somebody got hurt! It has to be bad news!

The landline was the only phone and it was connected to a solid that was cumbersome to carry around. I bought 25' cords to attach to the mouthpiece so I could walk around with it and talk at the same time. I even bought my best real estate buddy a 25' cord because we talked so much.

Now I can pay $15 a month and have unlimited long distance calls! It used to cost extra to call little adjoining towns called Kensett, Judsonia or Bald Knob. We had to pay so much for long distance that when we traveled we had a little system to let the loved one know we'd arrived safely.

We'd use the operator (remember the operator!! you could get an operator!!) to call person-to-person. We'd ask for a certain person and the person was NOT available. Our code worked. We had told mom, probably the unavailable person, that we'd arrived at our destination.

With the phone system that we have now, things have certainly improved! We could tweet our safe arrival at the destination. But old habits die hard and the daughter missed her call. And I'll bet you one thing! If I call her tomorrow at 10:00 am she'll frantically cry,

"What's wrong! What happened! Why are you calling me this morning!"