u/Beneficial_Win_5128

I've been unpacking some childhood memories lately, and there's one thing that I uncovered that I wanted to share, because I have a feeling some of you might relate.

We had dial-up internet way later than most people. I'm talking roughly 2008, 2009, maybe even 2010. My mom had moved us out to a rural area that didn't have the normal broadband options, and before that, where we'd lived before, the house only had one phone line. And if you know about dial-up internet, you know where this is going: internet used the phone line. So a person could use the internet, or make a phone call. One or the other. Never both.

What I grew up thinking was normal: constant squawking over who "got" to use the internet and who needed the phone. My parents would power-trip each other over it. *"You need to be off that by 6:00 because I'm expecting a call."* Then when I wanted to get on, to email relatives, play computer games, do literally the only normal adolescent things available to me in the environment they created, it was the same thing directed at me. *"Get off the internet, I need to use the phone."* Just this endless, low-grade tug-of-war over a single phone line between three people, every single day.

I thought this was just how it was for everyone back then.

However, years later, I started seeing people online casually mention that back in the dial-up days, plenty of households just… got a second phone line. A dedicated internet line. Problem solved. No drama. No daily standoffs over who got to check their email versus who was waiting on a phone call.

Why the hell didn't my parents do that?

Both of them had professional incomes. We lived in a low cost of living area. This was back when everyone's purchasing power was a lot higher than it is today. And then after they split, my mom had an even larger income, plus child support on top of that and still it never happened.

Which brings me to the second part of the memory. By the later years of that period, cell phones had mostly taken over real phone calls, but out where we lived, service was spotty at best. So the dynamic just morphed. Now it wasn't about tying up the landline for calls, it was my mom squawking about how she *"had to do important work stuff on my cell phone because you're hogging the internet."* Complete with the guilt trip: *"Look what you put me through."*

I didn't know how to respond at the time. Today? I'd probably say something like: *Then why didn't you take some of that child support and pay for a second phone line so I could just relax and do normal kid things without you harassing me?*

And here's where the research comes in. I got curious recently and actually looked it up. Back in those days, the late '90s through the 2000s, the average cost of a second residential phone line was **at most about $25 a month.** In a lot of places, it was only **$10 or $15 extra per month.** That's it. That's the price tag on all those years of daily conflict. Ten to twenty-five dollars a month. Pocket change for a household with two professional incomes, and later for a single parent with an even larger professional income, and child support on top of that.

It really drives home that none of this had to happen.

There's something you all might understand better than most: these kinds of parents didn't actually want the problem solved. They didn't want a solution. They wanted the fight. I could tell a similar story about how we COOKED every summer because they never thought to use their wealth to buy standard window air conditioners, which were super common by then even among lower income households. Same thing with the internet line. They wanted the leverage, the ability to gate-keep access, to be the victim, to manufacture a crisis and complaint source over something that had an off-the-shelf fix for the price of a sandwich. Getting a second line would have ended the power struggle, and the power struggle was the point. I grew up thinking this is just how life is. After going N/C and almost N/C with them, I see that it usually doesn't actually need to be this way, for most things.

Anyway. I'm curious, does anyone else remember misadventures like this from back then? The dial-up standoffs, the phone-line power struggles, the weird artificial scarcity in a house that absolutely had the means to fix the problem?

Would love to hear your stories.

I've been unpacking some childhood memories lately, and there's one thing that I uncovered that I wanted to share, because I have a feeling some of you might relate.

We had dial-up internet way later than most people. I'm talking roughly 2008, 2009, maybe even 2010. My mom had moved us out to a rural area that didn't have the normal broadband options, and before that, where we'd lived before, the house only had one phone line. And if you know about dial-up internet, you know where this is going: internet used the phone line. So a person could use the internet, or make a phone call. One or the other. Never both.

What I grew up thinking was normal: constant squawking over who "got" to use the internet and who needed the phone. My parents would power-trip each other over it. *"You need to be off that by 6:00 because I'm expecting a call."* Then when I wanted to get on, to email relatives, play computer games, do literally the only normal adolescent things available to me in the environment they created, it was the same thing directed at me. *"Get off the internet, I need to use the phone."* Just this endless, low-grade tug-of-war over a single phone line between three people, every single day.

I thought this was just how it was for everyone back then.

However, years later, I started seeing people online casually mention that back in the dial-up days, plenty of households just… got a second phone line. A dedicated internet line. Problem solved. No drama. No daily standoffs over who got to check their email versus who was waiting on a phone call.

Why the hell didn't my parents do that?

Both of them had professional incomes. We lived in a low cost of living area. This was back when everyone's purchasing power was a lot higher than it is today. And then after they split, my mom had an even larger income, plus child support on top of that and still it never happened.

Which brings me to the second part of the memory. By the later years of that period, cell phones had mostly taken over real phone calls, but out where we lived, service was spotty at best. So the dynamic just morphed. Now it wasn't about tying up the landline for calls, it was my mom squawking about how she *"had to do important work stuff on my cell phone because you're hogging the internet."* Complete with the guilt trip: *"Look what you put me through."*

I didn't know how to respond at the time. Today? I'd probably say something like: *Then why didn't you take some of that child support and pay for a second phone line so I could just relax and do normal kid things without you harassing me?*

And here's where the research comes in. I got curious recently and actually looked it up. Back in those days, the late '90s through the 2000s, the average cost of a second residential phone line was **at most about $25 a month.** In a lot of places, it was only **$10 or $15 extra per month.** That's it. That's the price tag on all those years of daily conflict. Ten to twenty-five dollars a month. Pocket change for a household with two professional incomes, and later for a single parent with an even larger professional income, and child support on top of that.

It really drives home that none of this had to happen.

There's something you all might understand better than most: these kinds of parents didn't actually want the problem solved. They didn't want a solution. They wanted the fight. I could tell a similar story about how we COOKED every summer because they never thought to use their wealth to buy standard window air conditioners, which were super common by then even among lower income households. Same thing with the internet line. They wanted the leverage, the ability to gate-keep access, to be the victim, to manufacture a crisis and complaint source over something that had an off-the-shelf fix for the price of a sandwich. Getting a second line would have ended the power struggle, and the power struggle was the point. I grew up thinking this is just how life is. After going N/C and almost N/C with them, I see that it usually doesn't actually need to be this way, for most things.

Anyway. I'm curious, does anyone else remember misadventures like this from back then? The dial-up standoffs, the phone-line power struggles, the weird artificial scarcity in a house that absolutely had the means to fix the problem?

Would love to hear your stories.

We're down to only the jars with the sticker on top, and they are NOT good. They're mushy, most of the flavor is gone, and one pickle had a brown spot inside it, running most of the length of the pickle

Gross

I'm finishing the rest of them but will not be re-purchasing. Limited grocery options where I live so I guess I'll learn to make fridge pickles now

Also, obligitory

I WAS TOLD IF WE ALL WORKED HARD AHMURRICA WOULD HAVE A GREAT FUTURE AHEAD, I WAS TOLD THIS WAS A SERIOUS SOCIETY BUT IT CANT EVEN MAKE A GOD DAMN PICKLE CORRECTLY ANYMORE WTF

edit: having lunch, the pickle I ate has a weird after-taste that I havent experienced with these before. reconsidering even finishing the jar now