Dating—then and now

There is only one thing that dating in the "olden days" has in common with dating in the—what is this decade called anyway, the Thousands?—and one thing that is the phone. By "olden days" I mean back when I was in high school, and those days are admittedly pretty olden.
That decade was the 60s and was dubbed the "Swinging Sixties." That was the decade when words like "cool" and "rad" and "hip" were coined, and we were—or are. Just ask us.
Back then, when a boy wanted to ask out a girl, his first step was to use his friends to find out her name, and if possible, her father’s name. Then he consulted an obsolete publication called the phone book. After some study and some deductive reasoning, he could usually figure out which of the possibilities was the correct phone number for his prospective date.
He might call her number a couple of times, listen to the voice at the other end, and hang up, "just so he could be sure he had the right number." Actually it took a couple of calls just to find the nerve to actually talk to this girl. But eventually, he would call and ask to speak to her and when he did, he knew for sure that he was actually talking to a girl who was actually getting his message. If she wasn’t too standoffish, he would make conversation for a few minutes and then ask if he could call her later. By the way, the telephone was in the main room of the house, and the whole family would likely be listening to her side of the conversation.
Then after a few more calls he might really ask her out. Asking her out meant asking her to do something specific on a specific day and at a specific time, which was the time he would actually pick her up at her house. Being late was frowned upon by the girl, her parents, her siblings, and her entire extended family.
Most of the time they actually did what they told everyone they would, with only a couple of drags up and down Main for the sake of conformity.
Well, even now, the phone is the facilitator in the social life of—well, not quite daters—more like hanger-outers. In fact, if a boy wants to get to know a girl better, he needs only one thing: her phone number—that would be her personal cell phone number. If he has that, he has a foot in the door, presuming he wants to put down his phone and actually show up at her door.
So he texts her a message that on her screen looks like this: "WSUP TOY JW WTDSS? " which interpreted is, "What’s up? I was thinking of you. Just wondering, would you like to do something sometime?" This, by the way, is an enormous commitment for a guy cyber-dater. He usually waits for the girl to do the texting.
By texting, our guy doesn’t need to put too much out there on the line. If she doesn’t reply, he can think that she didn’t get the message, that she was indisposed, or that she didn’t get it until later because her cell phone battery needed charging. (Why is there not an acronym for that?) By the way, cyber-and wireless-daters are spared all kinds of anguish because they are never present to witness the actual response of the textee.
Providing her reaction was positive, she texts back, "OK SLAP" which means, "Okay, that sounds like a plan," which is a massive overstatement. "L8R" "See you later." She’s not much good at commitment either.
So whenever later is (I don’t know how anyone knows) boy calls, not texts, girl and says, "I’ll be over this afternoon; I’ll call you when I leave." He does…her number is in speed dial by now. "Okay, I’m leaving. I’ll be there in a bit. I’ll call you when I’m almost there."
If he gets caught in traffic, no one will mind; and guess what, he is never late. What they will do next is still a mystery to everyone, which goes to show that they seem to have mastered the art, or science, of virtual dating.