The phone rang in my parents’ Park Avenue apartment. Not a phone. The phone.
It was the late 1980s or early 1990s, I forget exactly when. Mobile phones were an unheard-of luxury, even for a double-income household on the Upper East Side. When the narrator of Will Smith’s breakout hit pretended to talk on his parents’ car phone, rap fans understood why: He was flaunting his wealth. Smith specified “car phone” because back then, a phone was normally something plugged into a wall.
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