If you were meeting up somewhere you’d arrange to have someone who was at home (and thus by a phone) to orchestrate any last minute changes of plan or notifications of late arrivals (via payphones, which were a thing, once).

You’d go into town regularly to pick up the new bus timetable.

You’d have a huge pile of maps in the back of the car, or one very big map book, often both. If you drove somewhere once, you’d remember the route the next time.

There was a set of encyclopedias at home to look up facts.

And a calendar on the wall. (That’s probably still a thing?)

There were a lot more newspapers and magazines around.

Everyone had a little notebook with all their important phone numbers in it. Filofax was revolutionary.

And we still remember the most important phone numbers from that little notebook because we had to dial them so very often.

We played eye spy a lot.

We were painfully, PAINFULLY bored.

Lines waiting for anything were agony, but we learned to tolerate them. There were less people so often the lines weren’t as bad but still.

Boredom is something we’re more sensitive now because we can be, much like hunter-gatherers were probably less sensitive to hunger and cold than we are.