As I see more and more of you babies and little ones begin to start their lives in this world, I often think about what you won’t truly experience, and no, I don’t mean human interaction. It’s the things of yesteryear that me and my fellow gen X’ers grew up with, became accustomed to, and even in our short existences, wax nostalgic about over beers and cocktails. What am I talking about?
- Televisions – I mean actual televisions. The ones that came encased in their own wooden box, they didn’t need any silly TV stand. The ones where you had to (are you sitting down?) get up, walk to the set to change the channel. No remotes kids! Do you know how many calories we were constantly burning?
- Ice cube tray – I’m quite certain your generation will be marveled about how far we’ve come as a society when it comes to creating ice cubes. You won’t even know what one is if you saw it as you’ll assume ice has always come from the dispenser in the refrigerator wall, or from the big box dispenser at Taco Bell or in a plastic bag from 7-11. They still have 7-11’s right?
- Landline – There are a couple levels to this. First, we used to have a housebound phone. These were devices you could make a call on from one house to another. Phones forevermore are constantly on the go and are not associated with the place that you rest your head. When you see really old movies from the 90’s you will be in awe that people used devices that were attached to a…wall! Second, when you see even older movies from the 80’s you heads will explore with the mere sight of the rotary phone! As a kid, we had to call our friends on a wall-laden phone that had a rotating dial on it and finger holes that corresponded to each number. We dreaded when our friends had a 0 in their number as it took 3 seconds for the number to register! Oh vey! And back then we were only dialing 7 digits to call someone!
- Be Kind. Rewind. – What? Yes, generation zygote. In order to watch a movie, you had to go to the video store, select a book sized hunk of plastic, put said plastic into a VCR (ask me some other time about this device) to enjoy a movie. THEN, when the movie was over, we had to REWIND the tape before returning it back to the SAME video store. Wacky I know. Thank goodness you’ve been spared this inconvenience.
- Books – These didn’t always come downloaded to your iPad or Kindle. If you wanted to read a book you had to go to the library (a place with a collection of books made of paper) or to the bookstore (an actual store that didn’t exist online). Wait. You probably don’t even read.
I’m sure there are many things I have overlooked. I hope this gives you some insight into the tough times my generation had while growing up. We overcame great obstacles in our youth and I’m so glad you’ll never have to experience our hardships.
Ming! (?, I’m assuming this will be the new catch-phrase in twenty years)