It's the 80s and I'm a teenager - is my mother being unreasonable?

[PresidentJoey]

She's just gone mental about the phone bill Apparently I'm not allowed to speak to my best friend on the phone for an hour after school!?? I'm sick of her controlling me!!

Reverse the charges next time.

You need a phone card and a suitable phone box

You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you get to the 90s and start blocking the line with your dial-up internet connection!

Is your phone in the hallway, with the phone book next to it smothered in your random doodles?

@mineofuselessinformation

You could get round the phone lock by jiggling the cradle to dial the number....

My friend taught me that, tappy tap tap the first number/gap/tappy tap second number/ gap etc...

@crumpet

It’s her fault. In the 80s the only phone in the house would have been in the hall, so she’d have known exactly how long you were on the phone for (and what you were saying) and should have nipped it in the bud sooner.

You need to make up a code language with your BFF to flummox any eavesdropper.

Not before 6pm though, YABVVU for this.

Were you using a telephone chat room? Naughty.

@TwoMuchTwoYoung

Reverse the charges next time.

I will, thanks hun! It annoys me also when I try to have a private conversation about boys and my mother listens in, I can hear the click when she picks up on the extension. Leave me alone mother, I'm having a mature conversation with Danny

@PresidentJoey

She's just gone mental about the phone bill Apparently I'm not allowed to speak to my best friend on the phone for an hour after school!?? I'm sick of her controlling me!!

That was my era. All my friends' parents put locks on their telephone handsets except mine. That's how bad it was. We had a party line with a family down the street, so we didn't yatter on the 'phone to friends as it would stop anyone else making a call.

We had a lock on our phone which you could get around really easily

Did any of you do the three rings thing? Three rings to a friend meant ''I'm on my way'' and to your parents ''I have got here safely''.

Never mind that

Mine's chucked a mental over the towels smelling of perm chemicals

Remove the little plastic circle in the middle on the phone that has your phone number written on then get a fork from the kitchen draw and place it in the middle and turn it until you hear a click . Each click is a number! Remember to replace the little plastic middle bit and only do this if your mum is on a late shift and won’t catch You!
Remember to let her know you were a genius and her phone lock was useless in the year 2000.

I got busted at work for spending a fortune ringing a horoscope line. My boss confronted me and of course I denied it, even though she phoned it herself and found out it was it was Scorpio.

Then she said "When's your birthday then?" I couldn't lie as I knew she'd just ask my mum.

Dial-a-Disc was another favourite of mine.

@Furrydogmum

My friends parents have a phone lock - she has to go to the phone box several streets away!!

My parents also put a lock on telephone, we had to ask for the key and were only allowed to make calls after 6pm and we were timed, no more than 10 minutes, and no privacy as phone was stuck on the wall by the front door.

Have you written to "Cathy and Claire" in the Jackie magazine yet to get their advice?

My nan has a party line. Sometimes when I ring her I end up talking to the woman in the flat upstairs.

my mum's fine but my dad is fed up so he handcuffed me to the bookshelf where the phone is.
no idea what he thought that would achieve, now I can't do anything else but sit & chat on the phone.🤷‍♀️

I cant be on the phone too long cos the hall is freezing, the coal fire in the living room only heats in there up.

We have a trimphone! (Yes, parents keep moaning about me using it.) Also they will never figure out I'm a sneaky smoker if I do it while hiding round the corner

My stepdad is always picking up the extension & reminding me he needs the phone for work had their own business when I'm trying to talk to the best looking boy in my class - it's so embarrassing!

My mums just came home from a night out & gone ballistic because I've got bubbles all over the bathroom they were coming out the door to be fair because I used the jacuzzi jets to get a proper Hollywood bubble bath like in the movies (this was fab once I'd got the hang of it).

90s teenager……we could talk for “free” for 59 minutes of an evening……set timer on my Casio watch, hang up and redial!

HotSauce don't forget to buy Jackie this week as there's a free sachet of Shaders and Toners hair dye.

Yeh my old girl won’t let me call before 6 either. Nag nag nag. So crap. Dun’t she know we’ve got important stuff to talk about. And she starts breathing down my neck if I’m talking for more than 10 minutes. She’s a dinosaur!

I am rather old so I am the mother in the 1980's. A friend of my husband confided that their teenagers were missing their friends in Australia and phoning them - subsequent phone bills were astronomical. Husband advised a phone lock which fitted into the dial. Unfortunately when one parent (both denied responsibility!) unlocked the phone to make a call, the dog swallowed the lock. The cost of surgery and recovery for said dog far outweighed the phone bill. We made a note never to give advice ever, ever again

@Pascal80

Did any of you do the three rings thing? Three rings to a friend meant ''I'm on my way'' and to your parents ''I have got here safely''.

That was the 80s equivalent of a 👍