>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.
How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?
>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.
How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?
Pick-ups and drop-offs? You walked yourself home, used your bike, or took the bus. This getting driven around is most ridiculous.
So many areas in the US are much less walkable and bikeable than they used to be. I say that as someone who bicycle commuted for years. When I rode my bike to school as a kid I dealt with 25-35 mph traffic. The traffic was much lighter, the vehicles were much smaller, the drivers weren't perfect but they were way less distracted, and the shoulders were in better shape.
We can try to raise our kids with values that are consistent with the ones we grew up with. But trying to give them the same conditions because "it's what we did" doesn't always match up with reality.
Is it true that pickup truck drivers often threaten to run over bikes to assert dominance or is that just one of those myths about how crazy America is?
It depends on your definition of "threaten", but the short answer is yes. I live in a mountainous area that's a destination for road bikers and mountain bikers. There's lots of sources of tension between cyclists and drivers.
On a regular basis I see people racing past cyclists, rolling coal at cyclists (I can't believe that's even a term now), blaring horns, and a number of other behaviors that fall under "threatening".
US vehicles, especially pickups, have outgrown a lot of rural roads that had their origins as footpaths and horse paths. Even with well-intentioned cyclists and drivers, it's often times a setup for conflict.
I wear Lycra, ride a funny-looking carbon road bike, and average about 3,000 miles a year. In college, I rode a beater bike everywhere for transportation instead of owning a car. I’ve never experienced that kind of thing, though I’ve heard occasional stories.
Drivers don’t pay attention and seem like they’re trying to kill you, but that feels more like recklessness than malice.
This is true, but it varies a lot based on local culture. "Let me buzz 'em / roll coal to teach 'em a lesson"
but you're not really going to see that in, say, Seattle
We used to use payphones and call collect, then say a quick message when the collect service asked for your name.
"Who is calling?" "Hi mom practice is over come pick me up!"
Ah, beautiful times. I remember that me and my friend abused Orange's feature to send voicemail messages directly to the voicemail inbox, without calling the other person at all. Since it was billed by the second, if you spoke very fast, it became much cheaper than SMS.
> How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?
With a lot more difficulty.
"I'll be done with marching band practice at 6:30"
"Ok, I'll come get you then"
Works great until your kid's the one that can't join their friends on, say, grabbing dinner after band practice, because they have no way of telling you "hey, change of plans".
If your kid can only participate in things that are planned well in advance, your kid is going to be missing out on ~80% of gatherings. Because everyone else is in the habit of making spontaneous plans, made possible by interconnectivity.
Are we talking about 8 year olds, or 15 year olds?
I think it's fine to give your 8th grader a flip phone. A third grader isn't "grabbing dinner after band practice".
For sports practice, I'd just take the sports bus home; the 30-60 minutes between the end of practice and the time the bus left was perfect for a little quiet reading or homework.
For band practice, I'd call my parents from the office phone, or plan to get a ride home from an older student who lived nearby, or just accept that I might miss out on something when mom picked me up at 6:30 and that's ok.
The issue isn't that it couldn't be done without technology. The problem is when everyone else has moved on to the technology based solution (mobile phones) if you don't you're just out of luck.
We used landlines of course, and it was an utter pain in the behind.
There was no way of letting anyone know that you were running late once they were already underway to pick you up.