Voicemail: a thing of the past. For those of you who are old enough to remember, do you remember answering machines?

There was nothing so soothing or so irritating than coming home and seeing ten messages, which always made you feel great if you were single because you would probably always think of all of the phone calls. So you millenials who don’t know what that is, it’s the thing that has numbers on it, and you dial it and you call somebody. We’d listen to it and you’d listen to all of your voicemail messages and hear people. Man, I used to love hearing people on my voicemail and my answering machine. That would be great. You hear their voices, you connect to them.

After answering machines came the voicemail. You’d pick up your phone, the thing that was attached to the wall for those of you who don’t remember, and you’d listen to a sound and the sound would go boop boop boop.

And you’d listen. You’d save voicemail messages. Don’t know why. You would never listen to them again unless you were creepy or unless he was really super hot and you wanted to be with him.

Then came visual voicemail. That was cool, that came up on your phone so you could actually see the person who called and listen to it. Now the voicemail is transcribed, so you can read it. But the problem is, nobody really leaves a voicemail anymore. Most peoples’ messages are that android-sounding half man, half woman character that says, please leave a message to 225-555-1212.

“Please leave a message.” Nobody ever really wants to do a voicemail message. I remember I used to do my voicemail messages non-stop. “Hey it’s David. Thanks for calling. I’m out and about right now but I will definitely get back to you, and make it a great day.”

I remember when I had answering machines. I put the Brady Bunch theme song on and people would just call up and listen and I remember one time I picked up the phone because I was running into my house, and a woman says, is this the house that has the Brady Bunch theme song? I said yes it is. She goes, I just called not to talk, I called to listen to it. We’ve been passing the number around the office.

But now, we don’t even bother calling anybody, or if we do call, we just basically hang up because now we just figure they are going to call back because they looked at missed calls. I miss messages. I really do. I want to hear somebody. I want to hear their voice, emotion, hear that they are actually a human being and not just a human texter.

I know, call me a dinosaur at times, call me a T-Rex, don’t call me any other names, but I kind of miss it. I miss the voicemail. I miss the answering machine. It was fun living in those days. Now we just live in a day of convenience. So if you see my number come up at 310 — what are you kidding me!? Think I’m really going to give my phone number out?

But that’s it. How do you guys feel about voicemail messages? Do you miss it, or do you like it the way things are?