The Last Payphone

I saw an article today that said New York City just removed their last public payphone. Why does such news bring with it so many emotions? I’m for sure getting older, we all are, but I’m not old…that old anyway. Seeing that news made me feel so nostalgic, or sad, or gray, or something like that. It doesn’t affect me personally of course. I have no idea when I last used a payphone. Have I ever used a payphone? Probably…maybe? And yet, this feeling of unease.

Time continues to move on whether we like it or not. The novel quickly becomes antiquated and our heads are left spinning. Maybe our identities become so wrapped up in the tools we use that we start to feel worthless and outdated too. Ok, that’s a bit melodramatic, but perhaps there’s something there. I’ll have to think about it some more.

I’m sad the last public payphone in New York City is gone. I guess I better not waste today spending too much time thinking about yesterday though. There are things to be done, now, in this present moment. Sometimes life is hard. Maybe in the past we find an escape from our present troubles. A little bit of nostalgia is nice, but too much can be dangerous. We can long for an imaginary world that never existed in the first place. Maybe as long as there is at least one payphone we can still hold on to the way things used to be. Life was so much simpler, right? I am sad the last public payphone in New York City is gone…but FaceTime is pretty cool.