I Used To

The other morning I was getting breakfast at a coffee shop and I saw a guy reading a letter. On yellow lined paper. Handwritten. Multiple pages.

"I used to do that!" I thought. I used to write letters to people. I used to get letters in the mail. It's not the novelty of paper - that hasn't gone away yet. It's writing letters. One of my favourite tracks on the new Arcade Fire album is We Used To Wait, about how we used to write letters, and wait for a reply.

This all got me thinking about things I used to do. I used to ...

• Tune a radio. With a dial.
• Record favourite songs onto cassettes and give them to friends.
• Get up to change the channel.
• Breathe secondhand smoke in restaurants, pubs, buses, airplanes.
• Dial a phone.
  
• Get a page while driving, then get off the freeway to find a pay phone in order to return the call.