Cellphones are ubiquitous now, but back in the day remember how big of a deal it was to own one? In 2nd grade I carpooled with the son of a big-shot Hollywood producer, and this guy had a cellular telephone! Everyone was impressed. It was the size of a briefcase and had a padded carrying strap, the damn thing weighed about 30 lbs. It was something like $2.99 a minute and the horrible microphone made it sound like a toilet was continually flushing behind you. The one time that we really did need to use the phone (flat tire on the freeway) the battery was dead. Oops. I guess you had to charge that sucker 12 hours a night, otherwise it wouldn’t work. The raddest thing about the phone though was that the guy would brag about the phone and his line was: “Yeah, so I decided to pay the extra $500 and get the touch-tone model. No biggie. Its a no-brainer!” Meaning that the other (cheaper) option was a rotary-dial briefcase cellphone!!
So what was your first “mobile” device?
