By the mid-1950s, most people had telephones. My family could not afford one.

My father and grandfather had declared bankruptcy in a business venture, and my father inherited large bills owed to the phone company.

I recount this story not to describe the hardships of living without a phone, such as when a neighbor pounded at our apartment door at 3 a.m. to tell us my aunt had been killed by a drunk driver.

No, what I recall the most about not having a phone was the humiliation.

Every year during elementary school, the teachers spent the first morning filling out attendance rosters. They never considered that calling out for a child's personal information could lead to embarrassment.

The teacher could have called up one student at a time to the desk, allowing the hum of classroom chatter to provide a shield of privacy.

The classroom moved in slow motion until the booming voice of the teacher called for "Hameroff, Glenn. Your address and telephone number."

I gave the address.

I paused for the hated question: Phone number?

"None."

Some kids tried to be nice. Others were mean:

"Why don't you string two cans together?"

"When are you going to move into the 20th century?

When I came home no one would sympathize with me.

I had to learn to steel myself from the embarrassment. A simple item like a phone became a major dream of mine.

Finally, a phone

The summer before the seventh grade, my uncle gave my father the idea of registering a phone in my mother's name. It worked!

We had a phone, I had a phone number. I could not wait for the opening day of school.

I sat in my homeroom at the junior high school with anticipation of the public completion of the attendance roster. For a few days prior, I had imagined standing up and saying DE8-6376.

I would be just like everyone else. I had earned the right to beam after all those years of humiliation. Being a bit different was fine. However being singled out and ridiculed was torture.

At the junior high school they didn't use attendance rosters; they employed something called a Delaney book.

This notebook-like device contained a seating chart for each class using little attendance cards containing all personal information.

The teacher passed out the cards and we quietly filled them out. All the anticipation had come to naught.

As I pursued a teaching career, student privacy became an important goal. I was always aware of the need to avoid embarrassing students. As a teacher and a parent, my planning always included a method to provide a shield of privacy for young people.

I handed out 5-by-8 index cards and collected all personal data without exposing any student to the uneasiness I had to suffer.

It's easy now to see the good that came from my trial-by-ridicule, yet I still wish I had a telephone back in elementary school.

Glenn Hameroff is a retired Three Village teacher. He lives in Florida.