Gather around boys and girls while I tell you a story from the distant past when people used to have phones attached to the wall in their homes and little tiny boxes somewhere else in the house that answered the phone for you and recorded messages on a horrible quality mini cassette tape.

That was back in the days before we all had phones of our own and people actually used to call and answer them. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true.

There were days before the answering machine too but that was caveman times. If you weren’t home you didn’t get the message. You don’t know who called or even if anyone did. It was a crapshoot.

But the answering machine changed everything. People started being able to do things and still make plans without having to stay home all day waiting for the phone to ring. It was life-changing and back then it was a novelty so not everyone had one and when you called and got one you weren’t annoyed by the answering machine. You didn’t even mind hearing the same message every time like we do today.

People listened to the whole message without getting upset. So of course people started getting creative with their answering machine messages. The entrepreneurs started selling funny answering machine messages that truck stops and roadside attractions where they have those kind of novelties.

People started asking their friends to make answering machine messages or celebrities on the street which apparently is quite annoying and something we shouldn’t be doing.

Every so often a radio station would have a contest for the funniest answering machine and once I won. Jesse and Jean picked my answering machine message as the winner of the day. I wish I’d kept a copy of it. I still remember the script but the answering machine message really had musical accompaniment and it was a production deal. I won two tickets to Second City and never went.

But the answering machine message I’m even more proud of was a confusing one that got some pretty funny messages left.

It started off mid-sentence with my voice saying tone beep and someone else’s voice continuing , saying yeah it’s Rick and so I think your answering machine is screwing up because I just heard somebody else’s message on it and that’s not good so you might want to look into that beep.

A lot of people didn’t know what to do and left confused messages but a lot of them called back to see if their message was now the outgoing message which of course it wasn’t and most of them got the joke.

Of course we still have answering machines they’re just digital and built into our phones now and nobody gets to hear creative ones because nobody calls anybody anymore and if they do and they hear the message it’s an annoying waste of time and if it’s a creative message it’s a doubly annoying waste of time.

The Lost artform of creating answering machine messages that are not boring.