You told me to right click…so I ‘wrote’ click. Does technology make you feel like a fossil? Time for a trip down memory lane!
Phones
With two Chatty Cathy kids, Dad got us a bitchin’ rotary wall phone with 20-foot spiral cord. You untangled it by dangling the receiver, then spun it like crazy. It never got lost, ran out of juice, and I wasn’t held prisoner by my “cell” phone.
Pay phones were germ cesspools, white pages required alphabet skills, exact change was a crap shoot. Yuppies conversed with bricks on their ears, and flip phones were secret agent cool.
I still remember my childhood friends numbers. Today, without contacts, I have no idea how to call my kids.
Televisions
Our first TV was black and white with rabbit ears. We were the remote. It had to be placed exactly to hold reception. With only two channels, Hockey Night in Canada and Tommy Hunter kicked off a swinging Saturday night.
The first TV I bought had a 26-inch screen in a giant console. Trips to VHS Village (formerly Beta Barn), was a Friday night delight. Today, universal remotes can only be operated by members of Mensa.
Stereos
AM radio and road trips were a bad combination. Road queens need cassette decks, but finding that special song was a workout. Fast forward/too far/rewind/too much. Eject was like ringing a dinner bell, inevitably gobbling up the tape. Pencils came to our rescue.
The next generation doesn’t know what a matchbook cover looks like, let alone it’s value to an 8-track tape. And let’s not forget about space, the vinyl frontier. Hey little 45, whadda you say you and I go back to my turntable and get it on.
Computer/Printer/Fax
My work printer had tractor-fed paper with perforated edges, which had to be manually torn off. The Xerox copied hundred-page documents one page at a time. I called it Bob Marley because it was always jammin’.
Cryptic DOS script on 64K RAM computers. Flaccid floppy discs. Thermal fax paper that curled into ringlets, then the print disappeared. The trouble with technology today is only geek squads, and the occasional toddler, can troubleshoot this shit.
Learning new technology is hard enough yourself, but it’s agonizing teaching it to someone else. I recognize that holy fuck look when the kids troubleshoot my lost document from cyberspace. Their eyes say byte me!
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Is it ironic that we are reading this on a blog?
All so true! I clearly remember when dad brought our first colour tv home. He turned it on and what was playing – Tommy Hunter!