Terms Which Have Disappeared

[BlueTrain]

One New Yorker acquaintance of years ago would say "Get out of here!" as an exclamation of disbelief (or something). But as far as the "Your mother wears army boots" goes, there is a joke about a Russian saying that to another Russian and not in a kindly way. The other Russian looks at him with a blank expression as says, "What's wrong with that?"

 

[scottyrocks]

Our telephone exchange in Brooklyn started with RN3-. The RN didn't stand for anything, except maybe 'registered nurse' in another context.

 

[BobHufford]

Our exchanges were UN-iversity and TU-xedo. I can remember the phone number from when I was a kid (it now belongs to an Asian market), but I can't remember my kids' phone numbers now. I do remember my wife's as it ends in '666'.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our telephone exchange in Brooklyn started with RN3-. The RN didn't stand for anything, except maybe 'registered nurse' in another context.

The idea of exchange letters that didn't stand for anything was the first phase of "All Number Calling," used in areas, like Greater New York, that were resisting the change. The idea was that letters that had no associated name would break down the habit of using exchange names, and make the subsequent forcing of ANC that much easier.

The main argument used for ANC was that with the growth in demand for phone numbers in the postwar era, the Bell System was running out of two-letter combinations that could be part of an easily-remembered, clearly-pronounced name.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One New Yorker acquaintance of years ago would say "Get out of here!" as an exclamation of disbelief (or something). But as far as the "Your mother wears army boots" goes, there is a joke about a Russian saying that to another Russian and not in a kindly way. The other Russian looks at him with a blank expression as says, "What's wrong with that?"

A lot of mothers in my neighborhood wore army boots. They were very good to have around during mud season, and were cheaper than anything from L L Bean.

A related phrase was "ahhhh, ya brother blows bubble gum!"

 

[ChiTownScion]

Our exchanges were UN-iversity and TU-xedo. I can remember the phone number from when I was a kid (it now belongs to an Asian market), but I can't remember my kids' phone numbers now. I do remember my wife's as it ends in '666'.

AVenue 2-3534. First number when I was a kid. Moved from that place when I was barely five, so we're talking 58 to 60 years ago.

 

[tonyb]

Modern phones might make calling someone easier, but in doing so they've eliminated the need for us to remember anyone's phone number who we call regularly. My best friend is a guy I've known for more than 40 years, but if I didn't have my cell phone with me I couldn't call him if my life depended on it because I don't know the number.

It's worth considering if and how the diminishing necessity to memorize numbers, literature, etc. might affect brain evolution and development.

I was once a taxicab dispatcher, after having driven cabs on-again, off-again for a few years. I had committed to memory thousands of street addresses and hundred blocks, et cetera. I could, from memory, direct a driver to the little half-block long dead-end streets accessed only off other winding dead-end streets. I was good at my work, and I took pride in it.

As it turns out, packing all that info into one's brain isn't such an extraordinary thing. Most any person of reasonable mental competence could do it, provided he or she cared to. New technologies have made such skills not quite obsolete, but certainly not as necessary, or marketable, as they once were.

Few people memorize entire religious texts anymore, for pretty much the same reason. Prior to Gutenberg, knowing the Bible forwards and backwards was a marketable skill. With the rise of the printing press came the decline of the itinerant storyteller. At this point, we can only imagine what digital technologies portend for reading and writing. I've heard grumblings of a "post-literate" humanity. Gotta wonder if there's much to that talk. What proportion of the general public could sight-read musical notation prior to audio recording technologies versus today?

 

[BlueTrain]

Perhaps but I wonder. I have an incredible number of passwords that I'm supposed to remember. Mostly I don't, however, but my fingers somehow remember. Some I have to write down, though. In fact, they're all written down somewhere but you're not supposed to do that with passwords. That's sort of like hiding the house key under the door mat.

I wouldn't be surprised if those with great skill at remembering and reciting text weren't also the ones who were the most literate, too. It might also be that fewer people can recite religious texts because people are generally less religious than they once were but that's an arguable point. But actors, particularly stage actors and other entertainers still have to memorize a lot of text. I've always wondered how they manage that. It might be a little easier for singers.

You may have a point, though, about music reading. It doesn't follow that many people in the past were even passable musicians and once recordings and radio became common, amateur musicians at home tended to compare poorly with professional or at least better musicians. So in the same way that television killed the pastime of going out to a dance, musical recordings and radio killed home entertainment. Even player pianos tended to kill the spirt of the amateur musician, I'd say. And somehow, a player piano seems like something from the Golden Era.

On the other hand, I'd guess more people can type than ever before, or as it's called in school, "keyboarding."

 

[tonyb]

A couple of decades ago it was speculated that digital technologies would usher in a new age of writing, what with the rapidly expanding usage of email and the rise of discussion forums such as this one. But then along comes inexpensive and widely available speech-recognition technology. A person of my acquaintance has "written" an entire book (it'll be a lousy one, if his prior literary efforts are any indication) by speaking into some gizmo that translates speech to text. Some people posting here use similar technology.

I wouldn't know if those who memorized the Bible back in the pre-Gutenberg days were more literate on average than the population at large. Perhaps they were. But literacy isn't necessary to such an endeavor. Millions have committed the Koran to memory. Are most huffaz literate? I suspect they are, these days, anyway. But historically? Such as those who knew the Prophet in his lifetime and committed his recitations to memory? I dunno. But I wouldn't bet on it either way.

 

[Zombie_61]

It's worth considering if and how the diminishing necessity to memorize numbers, literature, etc. might affect brain evolution and development.

I suppose some would theorize that the lack of necessity to remember phone numbers and such would "free up" the brain for more important tasks. But as BlueTrain pointed out, that necessity has only been replaced by the need to remember the numerous user names, passwords, and numerical key codes required to do almost everything in our current computer-driven society, so we're right back where we started from and might even be worse off than we were before.

 

[tonyb]

There are habits of mind that find application in seemingly unrelated tasks.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Once when I was young and bored, I spent a rainy afternoon at my grandparents' house with a copy of the World Almanac, memorizing random facts. Among them was a list of baseball pennant winners from 1903 up to the then-present day, which from then on I was able to recite at will. Although I have problems now with memory lapses, and my short term memory is badly eroded, I can still recite that list, as I learned it that day, without a hitch -- and being one of the few sources of numbers that remains part of my permanent memory, I use various combinations of dates from that list as PIN numbers -- and I remember them by remembering team names or combinations of names. If, for example, I used "242533" as a PIN, which I don't, all I'd need to do to remember it is think of the word "Washington." Because I learned the list at a very young age, I expect to retain the information right to the bitter end -- and the length of the list allows for sufficient combinations and variations to be reasonably secure. It's the only way I can keep track of this kind of stuff.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I remember when my small town dial phones were introduced (suburban Pittsburgh, late 1950's). Our exchange was VAnDyke-8. Before that, you picked up the handset and when the operator answered, "Number, please.", you'd tell her the number. My house was 917M.

 

[EngProf]

I saw a PBS documentary (or similar show) in which some researchers did brain-scans on London taxi drivers who had to memorize a huge amount of directions and addresses, and they found that the drivers had altered brain structures compared to most humans. The regions devoted to information storage were either bigger or denser (however that works).

It's remarkable that so many of us can remember the phone numbers we had as kids. When I was in the the 4th grade our number was CA - 8 - 3901. (CA = CAnal)

 

[BlueTrain]

I can remember lots of numbers from when I was a child in the 1950s, although they were all short numbers. The telephone number was the longest. The house number was three digits, the post office box number was three digits. The post office, by the way, was a very impressive building, too, nothing like the ones today, although modern ones are rather more friendly with open counters. The old one was rather bank-like, with grates across the tiny windows where the clerks were. But the building itself was almost like a temple.

I have suspected for some time that the only reason our short term memory seems poor when we get older is simply that there are fewer and fewer things worth remembering. Except, that is, for all those passwords and user IDs, none of which can be as short as three digits. One could even say that we live in the past because for us, there isn't much life in the present.

 

[scottyrocks]

Before cell phones, most everyone had a personal 'phone book' or rolodex, where you kept the numbers of all of the people you knew who had telephones. These were usually kept at home. With cell phones, the 'phone book' is built in, except you don't have to actually dial (or punch) the number. It's true that one could carry around a small book (little black book) everywhere, but if the phone itself holds the numbers, then the book is redundant.

Any profession where you do something repetitively enough times will allow the brain to remember how to do it without much thought. Cab drivers, musicians, oral surgeons, you get the idea. There will always be things for us to put into our 'muscle memory.' Remembering phone numbers is not high on my list.

 

[BlueTrain]

The thing about passwords is that they sometimes have to be changed every three months or so. But I can still manage to come up with a system for generating passwords that mean something to me.

 

[St. Louis]

About phone books: I have 1930s dial-phones in my house. I love them because they allow me to get off the phone when I want to end the call. My friends know that I can't lollygag on the couch while talking. I'm tethered to an uncomfortable hard chair and have to hold a heavy receiver up to my ear. Therefore, no long calls. Perfect excuse.

I had to give in to the cell phone trend eventually, mostly because I have to travel for work, but I still have an old-fashioned flip phone. Young people find this exquisitely amusing. I recently asked one of my nieces for her new mailing address and handed her my little black book and a fountain pen. She couldn't get over it. I think she felt as though she had time-traveled back to the early middle ages.

 

[MisterCairo]

It's remarkable that so many of us can remember the phone numbers we had as kids.

1972-1976 (416) 639-0988
1976-1988 (905 - they added a new southern Ontario area code, 416 is now strictly Toronto) 336-2649

Postal codes were L7M 1C2 and L7M 1S9 respectively (we moved within a developing subdivision).

Between then and my current coordinates, I have no recollection.

 

[BlueTrain]

Supposedly, we learn things more easily when we're little kids (except maybe when we're actually in school). That's why the children of immigrants pick up the language so quickly and their parents never quite lose their accents. Then, too, one's childhood, say, from birth through around the end of 6th or 7th grade seems like forever (about 12 years in reality) but when you're an adult, it seems to have flown by.

There are probably things you'd like to forget, too, but can't.