This will make you feel old: parent struggles to explain a pager used in a Buffy episode to a 10 y/o

Indiemamma tells Reddit, “I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 10yo…”

I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my 10yo…

…and Buffy exits a scene by calling back at Giles “OK, but page me if you run into any flesh-eating zombies.”

My kid turns to me and asks “What does ‘page me’ mean?”

Me (feeling old): “Oh, pagers are what we had before cell phones…Giles could call her pager to have Buffy call him back.”

“So he’d text her?”

“No, it wasn’t like a text. It would just have his phone number on it.”

“But she could text him back on the thing?”

“No, she’d have to call him.”

“Why wouldn’t he just call her on the page thing?”

“You can’t make calls on the pager. It would only show a phone number. You had to find a phone to call back.”

“So she has to borrow someone’s cell?”

“No. Only rich adults had cells. Kids usually had to find pay phones.”

“What’s a pay phone?”

“It was a phone that anyone could use. It would be out on the street and you’d put quarters in it to call someone.”

“Ok, so…Giles would send a message to her page thing, and then she’d have to stop hunting vampires and find a phone and find quarters just to call him back?”

“Yes.”

“Mom, life was stupid when you were a kid.”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4ti0ep/i_was_watching_buffy_the_vampire_slayer_with_my/