Discovering relics

"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you"

"Mom, what is that?"

I burst out laughing. "It's a pay phone!"

"A what? How do you use it?" Madan was intrigued and kept lifting the phone off the receiver, perplexed as to why it remained tethered.

"You put a quarter in the slot and push the buttons to dial a phone number to call people." A small group of kids had now gathered around to hear me explain the contraption, staring up at me as if I was holding two stone tablets bearing inscriptions. Suddenly, I was so wise. Suddenly, I was so old. I couldn't believe I was explaining the concept of a pay phone to a gaggle elementary school kids. Don't they teach history in school?

The group was intrigued. They were pressing buttons, examining the phone, talking into it and laughing their asses off due to the huge-ness and absurdity of the invention.

"Why wouldn't you just use your cell phone?" Twenty eyes had fixed their gaze on me and were waiting for the answer.

I wanted to say, "Well, if you're over the age of 80, and lucky enough to have escaped from your caretaker, you probably don't have a cell phone to call your kids and yell at them for making your life miserable. You would need to use one of these." But we were in the lobby of the library. I decided to exercise restraint.

"Good point. But, if you forget your cell phone ..."

They looked at me like I was retarded. Forget a cell phone? Who the hell would do that? I glanced at the pocket in my purse which was missing something.

Only a relic like me.