Dandy Don, you must be one of those old fogies still living in the days when people feared the arrival of their telephone bill, frighted that the long distance calls they made would bust the budget. I remember those days, when I was in high school and college, when my parents would only call me once a week, and limit the call to 10 minutes, because of the long distance charges for a call from Illinois to East Lansing Michigan, and when Dad rebuked Mom for spending too much time on the phone talking to her Mother and Dad in Milwaukee, or to her Brothers in Madison and Minneapolis. Those days are long gone, but some people just never forget. When my mother was living with me, after Dad died, before she died, she would complain about not hearing from her long time friends, spread out all over the country from Virginia to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Tennessee, Colorado, even Hawaii. "Mom," I'd say, "Just pick up the damn phone and call them!" Mother always replied, "But I don't want to drive up your phone bill!" To which I replied, "Mother, how many times do I have to tell you - I pay a fixed rate for unlimited nationwide long distance calling! You can be on long distance calls for 12 hours a day as far as I am concerned; it won't increase my phone bill by one cent!" Yet every subsequent conversation on long distance calling went the same way.
