Thursday, October 14, 2004
my payphone story
Remember 1975? Remember hearing about 1975 from your parents or grand-parents? Yes? No? Well in 1976 I moved back to Montreal, where I had grown up and rented a 3 and a half room apartment with my friend Johnny McKay. Now, in those days, it took a couple weeks for Bell to come around and install your phone... things haven't really changed that much.
So, we would go around the corner to a phonebooth, which was in front of a depanneur, cornerstore for those of you not from Montreal, which is also where we bought our beer. Now I had just come back from Toronto and in those days you had to go to a beerstore, fill out a request form, present your request form along with your Ontario approved photo-id and then wait for your beer to roll out in a brown-paper bag. Which of course was completely foreign to me and caused me to argue with the cashier and let him know that I came from a civilized place where you didn't have to fill out a form, which caused me to get thrown out of a couple beerstores. I soon adapted. I moved back to Montreal.
So, we would get our beer and Johnny would call his girlfriend. Now she was never in when he called, I don't know why. Finally, he left a message for her to call him back in the next 10 minutes and we would wait and drink our beer. We didn't tell her mother about the beer-drinking part. We waited almost 20 minutes, long enough to finish a beer and then we went back to our phoneless apartment.
I don't know if it was the next day or maybe a couple days later we were walking by that depanneur, on our way to the liquor store, which we needed to take a bus to, and the phone in the phonebooth, in front of the depanneur started ringing. Johnny answered it... ... ... it's your mother! She gave me hell. She said, Is Gail Kapusta more important to you than your own mother that you would give her your phone number and not give it to me? So, I told her the truth, except for the buying and the drinking of the beer parts of the truth. She calmed down, and made me promise her that she would be the first person to get our phone number once our phone was hooked up. True story.
So, we would go around the corner to a phonebooth, which was in front of a depanneur, cornerstore for those of you not from Montreal, which is also where we bought our beer. Now I had just come back from Toronto and in those days you had to go to a beerstore, fill out a request form, present your request form along with your Ontario approved photo-id and then wait for your beer to roll out in a brown-paper bag. Which of course was completely foreign to me and caused me to argue with the cashier and let him know that I came from a civilized place where you didn't have to fill out a form, which caused me to get thrown out of a couple beerstores. I soon adapted. I moved back to Montreal.
So, we would get our beer and Johnny would call his girlfriend. Now she was never in when he called, I don't know why. Finally, he left a message for her to call him back in the next 10 minutes and we would wait and drink our beer. We didn't tell her mother about the beer-drinking part. We waited almost 20 minutes, long enough to finish a beer and then we went back to our phoneless apartment.
I don't know if it was the next day or maybe a couple days later we were walking by that depanneur, on our way to the liquor store, which we needed to take a bus to, and the phone in the phonebooth, in front of the depanneur started ringing. Johnny answered it... ... ... it's your mother! She gave me hell. She said, Is Gail Kapusta more important to you than your own mother that you would give her your phone number and not give it to me? So, I told her the truth, except for the buying and the drinking of the beer parts of the truth. She calmed down, and made me promise her that she would be the first person to get our phone number once our phone was hooked up. True story.
