FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for August 09, 2021

While cell phones and beepers were around in my time of high school, I certainly didn’t own either one myself.

At 80, I have one from Tracfone with about 10,000 minutes accumulated over many years because I only use on trips out of town or for the apps, and I don’t take incoming calls. I consider it to be part of “my lawn”, which everyone should keep off of.

The Cellphone was invented in 1972, but didn’t come to market until 1983 in LA and NYC. They’ve been around longer than you think.

Beepers were invented in the 1920s.

I was working at an elementary school when this was first published. One day a fourth grader came to me and told me excitedly: “I’m getting a cell phone next week!” I asked him what he was going to do with a cell phone, and he answered: “It has Snake on it!”

I’m glad they didn’t have them when my daughters were teens. I wouldn’t have been able to afford them.

This ‘toon is from 2000. I didn’t get my first cell phone until 2002, and it was much later I got my first smartphone.

Wow, how times have changed.

Definitely dates this comic doesn’t it? Elementary school kids have cell phones now.. SAD.

My eldest granddaughter got her first phone at 14. It had a lot of restrictions on it. Mostly she could call family and text numbers she was cleared to text.

This turned out to be to our benefit. We hardly hear from her parents but she keeps us informed on what’s going on.

Who still has a beeper? I guess some professional.

Doubt that……

oh wow, a time when cell phones were considered luxury items, I can just about remember that time, I got my first phone when I was about 13 I think, I used it mostly to call home when school let out earlier than expected.

She should be ecstatic to get her son a phone, do you realize how many teen dramas and sitcoms from the 90’s would lose SEASONS worth of episodes to plot lines that could be solved with a 30 second cell phone call? “It’s an hour past curfew and my daughter isn’t home yet! <sends call/text> Ah, the party is still going on and she’s with all her friends, cool.”

We had to buy one for our daughter to keep track of her, living in a small town and her driving to a larger town does that.

Heck, six-year-olds have cell phones now…

When I started teaching at Public School our principal told us the only Students who had beepers were drug dealers. We were told to impound them.In a remarkably short time I saw Beepers as a premium for breakfast cereal. Soon to be followed by inexpensive cell phones….the joys!

Andy wouldn’t have had a cell phone even if they had of been around when she was in high school because she spent all of her time researching new uses and recipes for eggplant.

16 wow he would be very missing out now I think my brother and I got a phone to share around the age of thriteen/twelve. It was a my kin phone shaped like a rounded sqaure and the size of your palm got lots of comments on it.

(not that it needed saying, but…) Tell us a comic is a rerun without telling us a comic is a rerun.

Many eons ago, the cool kids had extension phones in their rooms. The REALLY cool kids had their own private lines. I was lucky my parents had a long cord installed with the phone so we could take it into the freaking kitchen.

Wow, how old is THIS?!?

So dated. Everybody has cell phones now, and nobody has beepers any more except doctors and drug dealers.

Ah yes, Andy, the most disliked mother in all Comicville.