Uphill, Both Ways

When I was little, I used to marvel at how old my mom was (because when you're five, someone in her late 30s seems positively ancient). It's because she'd tell me all these stories about how candy once cost a penny, phone numbers were only a few digits long, "gay" meant happy and "fag" meant cigarette, and pterodactyls used to chase her home from school. Okay. Maybe not the pterodactyls, but you get the point: the world was much different when my mom was a little girl.

Fast-forward to now, and I'm the one that's old. My kids think it's mind-boggling that I grew up without the Internet. I had to use encyclopedias to learn stuff, and - gasp - the library, where I looked stuff up in a non-computerized card catalog! (Dewey Decimal System, anyone?) I used an actual paper phone book when I wanted to prank call look up someone's number. And speaking of phones, you wanna know something I find hilarious? Like virtually every other child for the past, oh, thousand years or so, my kids have one of these:



But you know what they call it? A car. They call it a car. Because it has wheels. And because they have never seen a corded, rotary phone. The only phones they're familiar with are small, cordless, and have buttons to push. So their toy doesn't look like a "real" phone to them, hence the reason why they pull it around the house shouting "Vroom!" and "Beep beep!"

I'm going to get to tell my kids that I remember life before voicemail. That I used to have to actually stay tethered to the wall when I talked on the telephone. That I recieved my first cell phone for high school graduation, and that it was the size of a brick (and just as heavy) with a long-ass antenna. That my family had an 8-track player, and I remember when cassette tapes replaced 8-tracks, and then when CDs replaced cassettes. That I remember when VCRs and microwaves were fancy and expensive. That the soda machine at my dad's office dispensed tall glass bottles. That I didn't even know what an e-mail address was until I was in high school. And that, when I started driving, gas cost like 85 cents a gallon.

It's really gonna make me look old in their eyes, y'all.

Some of it even makes me laugh in amazement. Like the fact that inspired this whole post: I was telling Colin that when I was in elementary school, if you behaved badly enough, you got spanked. At school. With a wooden paddle that hung in the Principal's office. Can you imagine if any Principal tried to spank a kid these days?

It's crazy to think how much has changed since 1985, when I started Kindergarten. That's only 25 years - in the grand scheme of things, not all that long. I can only imagine what it's going to be like by the time my boys are in high school. I'll look totally archaic when they trade their backpacks for jet packs.

Comments

  1. That is so true! It is really scary the things our children will NOT know. But then again it is even scarier the things they WILL know that we didn't have a CLUE about! Craziness!

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  2. Kindegarten in 1985? Shoot, you're a postive spring chicken. I was a super grown up 7th grader in 1985.

    But, this was a great post. All soo true. It's amazing how quickly life and technology moves. Our kids don't know any other form of music than an i-pod. How wierd is that/

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  3. I know!!! My husband's students at school were asking why I was having surgery (bit of a skin cancer scare last year, no worries), and he said, she has skin cancer. They were like, Oh no! My husband said, She grew up in Phoenix in the 80's and they didn't wear sunscreen then (I was born in the mid-70's). The kids were like, She was born in the 80's?!!! She is OLD!

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  4. hahaha, you made me laugh b/c it's oooh sooo true, but you also made me feel OLD b/c I GRADUATED high school in 1990. My kids thought it was ridiculous when I made them use a dictionary (a REAL dictionary) instead of the internet...and maybe it is, but they at least need to know what dictionaries and encyclopedias are!! And they need to learn how to play tennis, bowling, golf, etc. IRL not just on Wii!! *sigh* I am getting old ;)

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  5. This is soooo true!! The other day Rebecca and I were talking and I asked her if she remembers 9/11. She said not much of it. She remembers the pictures on t.v. Rebecca still amazes me when the looks she gives me when I tell her about things that I grew up without. Poor Collin has no idea what kind of technology I've seen or all the history that has been made. I'm sure I'll be re-living it all again with him.

    By the way, I remember playing with the rotary phone that you pulled behind. It couldn't be that long ago.....could it?

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  6. Did we go to the same school...I remember that darn paddle! I was so cool in high school because I had a phone in my own room...none of my freinds had more then one phone in the house. Now every kid has one in their hand.

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  7. Girl I started kindergarten in 1977, and yeah, it has changed a lot.

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  8. Things change so much in 5 years let alone 25. It really is amazing.

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  9. HAHA...so glad phones are tethered to the wall anymore!

    I know, it's scary to think what is ahead...

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  10. I wasn't born until 1987 but I STILL feel like most of these things ring true to me too!

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  11. Hahaha, I never think about these things, however I'm born in 1968, much older than you ;)

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  12. Oh, I loved my chatty phone!! I bought one for my kids, too, probably more because I loved it than because they wanted it: )

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  13. Yep, I'm still the oldie in the crowd. I remember life before pantyhose, picking up the telephone and telling the operator what number you wanted, and gasoline for 23 cents a gallon. LOL

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  14. Man, I remember trying to win a radio contest with the dial phone. You would dial one number, wait for it to spin around, dial another number, wait for it to spin around....etc etc.

    The best thing ever was when the push button phone came around. LOL

    Too funny.

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  15. Uh, that "phone" has a major roll in the Toy Story 3 movie.

    I pulled out an old record to play for my first graders and they were blown away. They had no idea what it was. There is so much truth to what you say.

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  16. This cracked me up!

    Oh, and down here in the south, we've still got a few schools that use paddles! I interned at a school a few years ago that still used spanking as a form of punishment - the parents have to approve it, of course, but I thought it was pretty shocking!

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  17. oh we had that little phone-car...
    love the blog, i'm a new reader and just grabbed your button!!

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  18. Oh yeah, times have changed. I remember going to the library when I had to write reports.

    I don't remember paddles though. I don't think my schools ever used them.

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  19. Don't forget microfiche to look up old newspaper articles! That's a classic and I used that in COLLEGE! :)

    Boy, we seem old and we aren't!!!

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  20. Your Mom and I were classmates long ago. I remember we wore dresses to school no long pants unless under your dress. Mom made me wear them, but I took them off at the end of the block and put them back on after school. Mrs Grimshaw busted me. I had to wait another block before taking them off.

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  21. Thankfully, our kitchen phone had a super long cord so I could stretch it all the way upstairs and into the bathroom! I also remember when my parents bought our first VCR from Art's in Moberly. I remember how long it took to set it all up, seeing the remote control for the first time (because before then it was the hand dial on the console tv to change channels!), and best of all, knowing they would RECORD The Smurfs for me so I didn't have to get up so early on Saturday mornings anymore!

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  22. Do you realize it's only been a few years since we DID NOT HAVE cell phones? In 1999 I had a bag phone in my car. Imagine! This was a most excellent posting dude-ette!!!

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