Andrew and I started talking about somethings we did or experienced growing up that our kids will never know about. At this point in time I can't remember exactly what it was, but it got me to thinking. So in my geeky way, I started mentally making a list and decided to write it down.
1) Cassette tapes and vinyl albums. Now my parents had, and still, have vinyl albums my brother and I used to play on the record player. Yes, I know how to work a record player, and I am oddly proud of that. Now, cassette tapes are obsolete although I still have a few. I'm hanging onto my Beach Boys tape since it was the first one I ever bought with my own money. My kids will never get to experience a cassette tape or all the wonders that went with it. Rolling the tape back in if it somehow got snagged and unwound. Stopping, hitting the rewind wind button, then play, then rewind, then play until you get back to the beginning of the sound you wanted to listen to again. No more recording off the radio where you get the tail end of the DJs voice to record a song on a mixed tape. Ahhh, mixed tapes. I remember spending hours making them in the quiet nook of my room using my two tape player boombox (lets not forget boomboxes!). And there's no forgetting the portable cassette player which weighed ten pounds and made your shorts hang down when you wore it. But you were cool because you were portable!
2) Blowing into a Nintendo cartridge game if it was fuzzy the first time you put it into the game console. No one ever really taught us this. It was just some inane ability we all knew would work (and it did!).
3) Payphones. I don't even know the last time I saw a payphone. I remember having to use one outside my high school to call my parents a few times. There used to be one on every block around DC. No one could get in touch with you at the drop of a hat. You lived off grid and the world didn't end because you someone couldn't get a hold of you. That was really nice and the main reason I conveniently forget to pull my cell phone out of my purse half the time. Sometimes you just want to be unavailable. And don't forget using a phone with a cord still attached. I'm not even sure if they still make those.
3) Dial up internet. Yes, spending the time to dial in to the internet line which took a good 5-10 minutes depending on how busy the system was. Slow as molasses internet. My freshman year of college, I still had dial up in my dorm room. My friends and I literally spent hours sometimes trying to get onto the internet just to check email. Once one of us was on, everyone hopped on that computer because you never knew when you would get bumped off because the system got too busy.
4) Dewey decimal system. If you don't remember this, you are young. I know my librarian hounded me because I didn't have it memorized and always had to look stuff up in the index of the library. You know the actually drawers of the library where index cards of all the books were stored. My kids will never know the joy of finding the card, then running around the library like a mad fool looking for the book.
5) The age of not having spell check. Yes, looking things up via the dictionary and thesaurus. Handwriting papers that had to be legible without the aid of Word. Googling it wasn't invented yet, so we had to turn to the good ol' hard backs.
6) And on that same note, not being able to do research for research papers via the internet. I had to go into the library, looking up several books and encyclopedias, and read them. Gasp! I remember my teachers specifically saying we weren't allowed to use the internet for research because it gave false information in high school. In graduate school, my professors would tell me where in the library intranet system to find the correct catalogs to do my research.
I'm sure there are a bunch more that I'm not thinking of. These were just off the top of my head. It's funny and odd to think my kids will most likely not experience these things. It almost makes me feel old. At least I can say, I'm young at heart!
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