Anyone else remember “The Baby-sitters Club” books? I read a bunch of those when I was in elementary school – mostly because they were on the shelf. I was thinking about them the other day, and I realized that one of the major points of the series when they all met at one girl’s house because she had her own phone line in her room – probably won’t make sense to anyone under 10 who picks them up from now on. They’ll probably wonder why the girls in the club didn’t just use cell phones.

The series as it is couldn’t have existed in a time before having more than one private phone line in a house was plausible – sometime after 1970 – and with the advent of common cell phones, it couldn’t have been created today, or really any time after 2003 or so. From brand-new to widespread to utterly obsolete in less than 35 years. Who’d’ve thunk it?

And separate phone lines aren’t the only thing that’s gone the way of the rotary dial. When’s the last time you used a phone book? Or saw one, for that matter?

But obsolete doesn’t mean forgotten. Consider how much media from the 20th century depicts phone books – as measures of strength or as casual parts of everyday life. I had a statistics lesson the other day that revolved around phone books as a way to count demographics. They aren’t really useful anymore, but they still fill this odd little niche in society. We still know about them.

Or consider spinning wheels. Interestingly enough, young girls between 6 and 8 years old are the demographic most consistently able to identify a spinning wheel – because of “Sleeping Beauty”. Are most of these girls going to grow up to use a spinning wheel with any sort of frequency? Probably not. But because of the stories we as a culture tell and the details we include, snippets of history get passed along.

Like I said, it’s becoming even more evident in 20th-century media, because technology is advancing so quickly and we have so many visual records now. I remember one time last year watching a brand-new show and being surprised to see the characters using smartphones, because I had gotten so used to television technology being always just a couple of steps behind.

So from now on, I predict any kid who picks up “The Baby-sitters Club” books is probably going to have a moment of confusion over the separate phone line – and then shrug and move on.

Heck, someday they’re going to do that when they read about a character having to charge their phone every night. It’ll just be one more token that evokes the past.

— Nina Collay is a senior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music, reading, wrestling with a heavy cello case, or poking at the keyboard of an uncooperative laptop.

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