An imagined conversation between a young person and an older millennial who just watched this ad…
Old: Huh.
Young: What?
Old: I just watched an old ad on YouTube, and it’s not how I remember it at all.
Young: What was it?
Old: So it’s about a guy who calls his dad to say he and his wife had a baby. But he doesn’t want to pay for the call, so…
Young: Why would he pay? He doesn’t have a phone?
Old: No. He’s calling from a pay phone.
Young: A what?
Old: It’s a type of land line phone. You used to put coins in them to pay for your call. In the ad, he doesn’t want to put in any money, but he doesn’t want to make his parents pay to take the call.
Young: Why would they pay?
Old: Because he would be calling collect.
Young: What’s that?
Old: It was a way of calling where the person receiving would have to accept charges. So in the ad, the guy making the call tells the operator…
Young: The who?
Old: It was a person who worked for the phone company. They would ask if the person you were calling would accept the charge. Later it was a machine. Anyway, this guy tells the operator his first name is Bob and his last name is “Wehadababyitsaboy.” So he can say they had a baby without the charges.
Young: And you didn’t remember that?
Old: No I remember it vividly. I remember the caller holding a cup of coffee, his parents reading the paper.
Young: The what?
Old: They were looking at the news. I remember all the details clearly. But when I watched the video, it was an ad for Geico insurance. I thought it was an ad for collect calls.
Young: An ad for collect calls?
Old: In the ‘90s, every commercial break included at least one ad for phone service. There were competing collect call ads. Some had the star of Married with Children in them.
Young: Christina Applegate?
Old: How do you know Christina Applegate? But…no, they had the guy who was also in Wayne’s World. There were also ads for long distance.
Young: What’s long distance?
Old: When you call another area code.
Young: …
Old: When you call someone whose phone number starts with different digits than yours.
Young: That cost more money?
Old: Yeah, except at nighttime or on weekends, which is why there were ads for it. They even did this on cell phones in the early days—nights and weekends cost less.
Young: Why?
Old: Probably because the phone circuits weren’t handling work calls. I don’t know. Anyway. There were also ads for phone service that had dads playing catch with their sons. It used to be a joke that they would make people cry.
Young: Who joked about that?
Old: They were in sitcoms. Almost every sitcom had a joke where a character would cry after seeing a phone ad.
Young: And there were a lot of ads?
Old: Yeah. And in my memory, the “Bob Wehadababyitsaboy” ad was for a phone service. But it was for Geico.
Young: Was the gecko in it?
Old: No. This was before the gecko. And before the cavemen.
Young: What cavemen?
Old: Geico used to have ads with cavemen in them. They were so popular, they even got a sitcom. Nick Kroll from Big Mouth was in it.
Young: Did anyone watch it?
Old: Yeah, between 6 and 10 million people watched each episode.
Young: So it was popular?
Old: No, those were terrible ratings at the time. Way more people watched Samantha Who.
Young: What?
Old: It was another show. More people watched The Moment of Truth.
Young: Huh?
Old: Private Practice.
Young: Never heard of it.
Old: Shark.
Young: No
Old: The Unit.
Young: What?
Old: Deal or No Deal?
Young: No idea.
Old: Anyway, Cavemen was a failure. You can’t give insurance ads a show.
Young: Did Flo ever have a show?
Old: No, but she was in Mad Men.
Young: The show about advertising?
Old: Yeah, Flo was in it, before she was Flo.
Young: Who did she play?
Old: A phone operator.
Everything Changes Until Nothing Makes Sense