by I was trying to remember the last time I heard a dial-up modem handshake. Not because I miss it exactly, but because I realized I couldn’t pinpoint when it stopped. It was everywhere, then one day it just wasnt. No farewell, no moment of silence. Just gone.
A lot of things vanish that way now. Slowly enough that you dont notice the absence until something brushes against it. A friend mentioned phone books the other day and I had to pause. When was the last time I saw one? Not used it, just seen it. On a porch, in a hallway, crumpled in a recycling bin. They were so ubiquitous that their disappearance almost feels like a glitch in memory. Did they fade out, or did I stop looking?
The list is longer than I expected. The chime of AOLs youve got mail. The satisfying weight and heft of a TV guide. The way youd navigate a city with a folded map spread across the passenger seat, making wrong turns and finding things you werent looking for. Calling a landline and hoping someone was home. The public payphone with the torn-out pages, receiver dangling like it had given up. Leafing through a newspaper that someone else had already read, trying to find the comics section.
Im not nostalgic for any of these things, exactly. Some of them were a hassle. But theres something strange about how quietly they slipped away. No announcement, no countdown, no memorial. The world just closed its hand and when it opened, they were gone.
I wonder what Im using today that will disappear the same way. Something I take for granted right now, that someone in ten years will say oh yeah, I remember that and struggle to recall the last time they saw it.
It wont be the big things. It never is.
— Teganna