By Carmella Fryar

First of all please let me say I am WAY too young to use the phrase Back in My Day. However, since it is September’s theme and because I will celebrate another trip around the sun this month, I decided it would be fun to take a look at social technologies from my back in my day through the lens of those we have today.

Back in my day, we had a family plan. It was a single phone hanging on the wall in our family room. Making and taking calls was confined to that small corner of the room. Going mobile meant upgrading the length of the cord.

We didn’t worry about such things as privacy. Simply put, we had none. My parents heard my side of every phone conversation which usually led to no less than 100 questions after most calls.

As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, for a good while we were on a party line which means we shared the phone line with other neighbors. At any given time a neighbor could pick up her phone to listen in on my conversation. Sometimes she might even join the conversation.

Speaking of joining the conversation, back in my day, CB radios were all the rage. When I joined Twitter a few years ago, communicating with friends and strangers via handle instantly took me back to those days.
My CB handle was Buggy Lady (I had a thing with lady bugs and I’ve always been just a tinge bass-ackwards). Mom was Cosmo (short for cosmetologist), Dad was Bedroom Bandit (give me a break) and my brother was Baby Bandit. My best friend was Daisy Mae.

As Twitter has rules and tools to engage (character limit, hashtags, mentions, lists, etc.), talking on the CB had a unique engagement model as well. When engaging with others on a channel, proper etiquette was to first ask permission to join.

For example, if I wanted to chat with those on the channel 19, I would say, “Breaker, breaker, one-nine.” Usually that would be followed by someone giving me the go ahead to chat, “Come on, breaker.” If I wanted to try to chat with my best friend I would say something like, “Buggy-lady to Daisy Mae, you got your ears on?” If she was on the air, she would respond and we would chat for a bit.

As with Twitter, you could connect with friends or complete strangers and anyone could join the conversation at any given time. If I didn’t hear a response from Daisy Mae, usually someone else would come back with an engaging comment to start the conversation. MOST of the time people respected the fact that we were children, amused us for a bit and kept the conversation PG.

To stay on top of severe weather and road conditions as they are happening today I rely on Twitter. Back then, you guessed it, we relied on our CB radio. We had them in our homes and in our vehicles. Much like Twitter, conversations could be entertaining, informational or provoking. CB’s also came in handy to avoid speeding tickets – that is if you kept your ears on.

For more examples of great CB uses from back in my day, see the movie, Smokey and the Bandit or any episode of The Dukes of Hazzard.”

Back in my day, I belonged to several social networks that included family, friends, piano guild and the church youth group to name a few. Things were quite different back then. Writing on someone’s wall would get you in trouble. Sharing photos meant ordering duplicate prints to hand out to friends. Shared recipes were handwritten (oh how I treasure those in my grandmother’s writing). My pin board was my bedroom wall, which was covered in pins of 80’s heartthrobs. A meet up might happen while cruising up and down Grand Avenue in Fort Smith. Hangouts were in person at the local Pizza Parlour, the skating rink or at a neighbor’s barn.

Let me be the first to say, Thank you, Lord for not allowing the technologies of Social Networks as they are today to exist back in my day. It was already challenging enough to grow up with a very unique name in a quite small town. I can’t imagine my shenanigans being captured and shared online.

I also wonder if our parents would have gotten into hot water had Instagram or Facebook existed back then. For example, our church youth group came over to my home on occasion and my dad would let us drive the ol’ green GMC around in the pasture. We were far from being of proper driving age. We rode around in lawn chairs in the bed of that truck. We jumped off bridges into 6 feet of water. How did we survive to tell the tales?

I hope you have enjoyed stepping back in time with me through the lens of today’s social technologies. Sometimes I feel conflicted when it comes to the conveniences of today. I appreciate how much easier it is to stay in touch with more people than in the past, to capture moments and memories digitally and to share ourselves with the world. However, sometimes I miss the simplicity of the way things were back in my day.

Carmella Fryar, aka Southern Fried Gal, is a marketing data geek by day and a designer wanna-be by night. She has a knack for connecting the not-so-obvious dots which serves her well for both egos. She’s chatty and creative, an ADHD mom and a recovering people pleaser. She shares her brand of crazy along with inspiration for your home on her blog. Connect with her on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.