The Way We Used to Call

It’s been years, more than a decade, since I last made a call from an actual phone booth. Cell phones, even in their clunky, early incarnations, were instantly a thousand times more convenient, and now that I’m packing an iPhone, I barely call anyone at all. Why bother when you can just text them?

I do get nostalgic sometimes for the old experience of shutting oneself behind a folding glass door, dropping a quarter into the slot, pressing those big metal buttons, hoping your friend was around to pick up the call. But there are so few phone booths left that it’s getting hard to find one to scratch the itch.

Which is why I was so happy to run across this pair, still working, near the corner of Piikoi and Young. How could I resist checking it out? I didn’t call anyone; I no longer have any phone numbers memorized and it would have broken the spell to pull out my cell phone to look one up. So I just sat on the little bench for a bit, enjoyed the quiet. It was nice.

Is this the last phone booth on Oahu? Are there others out there that still work? If you’ve seen one around, let me know. It’s probably time to treat them as an endangered species.