"I Got a Call From This Number.."

I'm all of 29, but the technological changes my generation has seen make for some strange memories.

Just around a half hour ago, walking home on the same path that's spawned other trips down memory lane, I saw I'd received a call to my cellphone from a number I didn't recognize. Calling back and telling the complete stranger on the other end of the line, "I got a call from this number", I was struck by how naturally this sort of interaction came to me.

I remember not so long ago when the callback service was first offered on our (landline) phones. Cellphones were yet to be seen, and our phones were limited to the only things I could ever imagine they'd do - dial and talk. Games? Call ID? Internet? Third Generation gadgets that run your finances based on self-updating stock-market reports? Science fiction!

Then one day, I could punch/dial a code - using that mysterious "*" sign I had always wondered about - and call the person I had just missed. The first time I had this sort of conversation was incredibly bizarre. "uh..." - what should I say? Describing this random, somehow inherently modern/urban/hyper-something incident was awkward. I was a kid. I knew everyone there was for me to know, and actively calling someone "out there" was an almost transcendent, philosophical experience. Talking to a total stranger - now so natural to us thanks, in part, to the internet - felt like those first radio bursts sent to outer space in search of alien life.

Being young didn't hurt, of course. Everything was new, strange, exciting yet scary, bizarre yet easily digested as the new norm. Growing up parallel to rapid technological innovation makes me wonder how much these sorts of memories are the result of a child's limited world view, and how much our perception today really has been expanded through communication technology.