Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/16/the-pager-codes-teens-in-the-1.html
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I was a teenager in the 90’s; I can recall my peers using certain codes at times, though not frequently.
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“Did teenagers use pagers in the 1990s?” No, I was a teen in the 90’s, and it was 1 in a hundred kids who had one (and that kid was usually a d-bag; I’m talking about you Brad).
“LA Times”. Ah, that’s different. Tons of kids in LA had pagers, rap music taught me that much. New York City too, probably. Everywhere else? Bag of quarters in the glovebox of the beater, I’d say.
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I will swing with that on the flippity-flop.
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I was not a teenager in the 90s… and only had a work provided pager. I couldn’t afford one nor wanted one for myself.
Of course by the time I finally got a cell phone, pagers were moot thanks to texting.
ETA
Yep that was my experience. Always make sure you had change for the pay phone.
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Missing 5318008
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I lived in a rural part of PA. Everyone in my peer group had pagers. As I recall, we used some codes, but not most of these.
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Call 867-5309
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Code 187.
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"you are receiving a collect call from
‘practiceisoverimreadytobepickedup’
do you accept the charges?"
Click
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I was a teenager in Miami in the 1990s and EVERYONE had a pager.
I graduated in 1999 and by that point most people had moved on to their first cellphone.
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Are you trying to give me an ear worm? I hate you; murder; death.
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I had a pager as a teen in the late 90s. I didn’t use codes. It was also annoying to call back anyone because I had to go find quarters for a payphone, so I’d go to a vending machine, put in a dollar and hope it gave back quarters for change instead of something dumb like nickels.
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Did teenagers use pagers in the 1990s? I don’t know any who did.
I knew one. He sold weed.
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You were obviously no cob nobbler in the 90s.
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Can confirm, was a teenager in the 90s (graduated HS in 1996) and had a pager throughout high school. We called them ‘beepers’ and they were quite popular. You could swap out the cases with different colors and accessorize them with all sorts of bling. They were quite the status symbol.
My Mom gave me a pocket size fold out card once with a bunch of codes on it, and she had one at home. In theory she could give me a shopping list to pickup at the grocery store on my way home. But in practical use it was pretty unwieldy. We used ‘911’ frequently to signal urgency, but for the most part spent a lot of time pumping quarters into pay phones.
In 1995 I graduated to a an alpha pager, where an operator would answer and transcribe an actual text message that would then display on my beeper. That was some cutting edge stuff.
When my friends and I ran away from high school senior year, we left my pager on the dining room table and used it to send messages to our parents via the operator. “We love you, we’re OK”, etc.
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I was a teen in the 90s with a pager. The only codes I know we used for sure was 911 and 69. Both of which would get you an immediate call back.
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Wehadababy Itsaboy
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My personal code was 666, and I sent that so my friends would know who was paging them without me having to enter my whole number. And of course I used 911 for every page, because every page from me is very important.
666 911
666 911
666 911
Ah, to be young again…
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