Beeper by Sinden and Count of Monte Cristal received the least votes for Best of 2008 …but I still think it’s a winner. Beeper reminds me of the exciting pre-wireless handheld device era where communication was dependent on a sole 10 digits.

I never had a beeper. Growing up in New York City in the 90s, a beeper was a somewhat standard part of the teenage experience, but my parents-who laughed at my plead for Girbaud jeans but were more lax around requests for a JanSport-wouldn’t let me get one. It didn’t really matter, because the prospect of joining some kind of beeper network with monthly fees attached seemed way too daunting anyway. So I yearned, and paged people.

I paged everyone who would give me their beeper number. I paged them with the longing of someone who would never know what it felt like to get that beep in the middle of a mall, or outside after school, the beep that meant that you were important because someone was thinking of you.

I paged creatively, with pre-emoticon language. 411 (information), 666 (bad news), 143 (I love you), 69 (self-explanatory). I paged from the portable landline phone by my kitchen table, then sat waiting to get a call back. The waiting was the best part. Way more exciting than today’s avenues for shortcut communication (texting, instant messaging, twittering), beeping someone basically commanded them to call you back. It was too mysterious not to.

666. That’s all you would reveal. The rest was left to the imagination. How could one resist returning that page? Beeping someone implied that you had important information, information that would remain secret until the return call was made. These days, hop online and you know everything about people you don’t even care about. People who don’t even remember what you look like are instantaneously informed that you bought an umbrella, or have the sniffles. Boring. The days of beeping cloaked you in mystery and drama. Highly preferable.

-Fucci

The Booby Prize