I don't know where you live

I was musing of Christmas Past and how things have changed since I was an eager 20-something in a world long gone.

Listening to a podcast last night (oh ok, if I'm going to be honest, it was a radio program, but at least I listened to it online so I'm not entirely a dinosaur right), a guy talked of how he briefly made friends with someone in Jersey. They exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch. Only he lost his friend David's address. For years, David would send him, by post, a Christmas Card, but the envelope didn't have his return address on, so he couldn't contact David and felt like so guilty.

It reminds of an old friend of mine, Marnie. We were really close at one time, then she moved and I moved, and the same thing happened. She had my address but I didn't have hers. We'd both changed landline (remember them?) numbers, and sadly I lost touch.

Which led me to think: of all my friends, I only know the home address of a few, the closest gf's. Do you know where all your friends live? These days, we know friends by their mobile number, Facebook Instagram or Twitter handle. I exchange greetings with a few dozen friends online, scattered around the world, but for all I know of them, maybe they don't exist. Maybe a Google computer has generated them, to con me into thinking they exist.

When I was as young as my kids are now, before online days, when you made friends, you found out two things about them: their home address, and their landline number.

At its most basic, you needed their home address to send birthday and Christmas cards, but that's all changed. These days, if someone I'd recently met asked for my home address, my first response would be suspicion. What do you want it for? Are you a stalker?

Sending Christmas cards by post was an experience in itself. Buy some cards, a mixture of good ones and bulk ones. Then go through your friend list. Does Amanda deserve a good card or an ordinary one. It said heaps about the relationship and it could be touchy. If you send her a cheap card but she sends you a good one, you're in trouble. And what if you forgot to send someone a card but they sent you one? To avoid too much embarrassment you'd quickly send a New Year's card with a lying message "I hope you got my Christmas card ok - a few seemed to go missing in the post".

Then the business of buying stamps at the Post Office. And watching for the post delivery each day, as a clump of cards arrived and the joy of tearing open each envelope to see who had remembered you.

An online funny picture doesn't seem the same, somehow.

There was never a moment when we all decided not to share our home addresses. It just sort of happened. Now, our home is our private retreat, the address secret to all except our closest of close friends.

Landlines went the same way. Who has looked up a landline number in White Pages recently? No-one ever. Back in the day, the government thought landline numbers so important , that everyone had the right to find your number, and published a paper copy of White Pages each year, a door stopper of a volume dropped at your doorstep.

But when mobile phones (cell phones to you yanks) came in, some faceless person decided the numbers wouldn't be made public. So there's no easy way of looking up a mobile number if you've lost it.

Landline phones were the source of many a good song ... "Hanging by the telephone", "Please Mr Postman", "Telephone Line". The days, before answer machines, when you'd wait, sitting by the phone, for a hoped-for call.

What's more, you didn't know who was calling. The phone rang and you had to answer it to find out. Now, the mood has changed. My mobile phone shows who is calling, or at least, their phone number. But I don't answer everything anymore. If it shows "No Caller ID" I just ignore it. If they are so damn secretive they don't want me to know who's calling, why should I answer? Same for landlines. If it's a landline I don't recognize I just block it (thanks Apple!) since it's probably someone selling something or a scam. If they really want to talk to me, they can send me a text message first.

That's another thing. Although my phone plan means, in effect, as many phone calls and data as I can eat, I use the data mainly, I message people, I hardly make phone calls. I thought it was just me, but I read something last week about how millennials have a dislike of phone calls too, preferring to text or send messages on any number of platforms. I didn't realize I was so up to date, but many young people in the article said they felt phone calls, particularly without ID, were intrusive and rude, like, you had to speak to this person in their time, whereas I'd like to choose when I reply to them.

So the world is changing - again. Never before have we had so many social interactions while also being more isolated and alone in our lives. Is that a good or bad thing? I don't know, but it's reality.

So I got to thinking about things my kids have never done or are fading away, that were normal in my life. Here's some:

Talking for hour on a landline.

Giving someone your landline number.

Sending a fax.

Watching TV with the family.

Using a phone booth.

Buying a stamp to post things (do you know how much a stamp costs anymore?)

Waiting for paper Valentines Cards to come in the post.

Sending paper birthday and Christmas cards.

Giving someone your home address.

Playing hopscotch after school.

Singing Oranges and Lemons while skipping.

Walking to school.

Talking to strangers.

Writing letters.

Taking books out from the library.

Visiting a bookshop.

We don't exist in the real world anymore, we live online. The real world only exists so we can feed ourselves and stay alive, it seems.