Does this ring a bell? In the 80s, all we had is landlines and pay phones. Only cool tv show kids had bulky cell phones the size of a basketball player’s shoe. Crazy...

The 1980s hit show Saved by the Bell I didn’t watch either. It seemed too contrived and preppy for me. However, it kept getting reboots throughout the 90s and now is back for a 2020 version. Mark Paul Gosselaar, the actor who played Zack, stayed with the show and apparently now is the fictional Governor of California. Can’t say I buy that, but I didn’t watch it then (and not doing it now).

Why I bring this all up (in a very round about way) is because the main character in my novel, Mabel, gets into a tough situation tracking down a murder suspect in the middle of the woods around Blue River, Washington. But how could she call for help without a cell phone? She couldn’t. Imagine what you would do in that situation.

The 80's were a time when phones stayed attached to walls, maps were on paper, computer games were Atari or Intellivision on big box sets, and the internet didn’t really exist. That’s a big one. It’s almost easy to forget how we actually navigated the world without much technology. If I wanted to reach someone from around the world, I couldn’t, not really — unless I hopped on a plane and flew there. While technology has connected us more, it is also separating us — keeping us more physically distant. For Mabel though, stuck in the woods with a possible killer on the loose, she would have loved a cell phone for safety. But she didn’t have it back then, so she had to rely on her wits. It’s a whole new way of thinking when technology is not right there at hand. When I was writing that chapter, I had to put down my laptop and imagine the situation, the smells, the sounds, and try to feel her fear of being in a very vulnerable position without technology to save her.

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