My kids cannot imagine a life without the internet. They don’t believe me when I say that when I was growing up, we didn’t have it. My son wanted to know how we did reports for school back in the olden days. When I told him that we went to the library and looked things up in way out of date Encyclopedias, he was blown away.
I had to go get a dictionary and look up vocabulary words by hand. If I wanted to watch a movie, I had to hope it would eventually come on television, and that we wouldn’t miss it, because there were no VCR’s. No DVD players. No cartoon network.
When I was little, my mom would tell us stories about sitting around the radio and listening to shows. She didn’t get a television until she was a teenager (though they were around, her family couldn’t afford one). I felt so BAD for her. How did she live without television? What did she do all day?
My mom’s childhood was much different than mine, and my childhood was much different than my kids. On our weekends, we went outside after breakfast, and only came home for meals. We rode bikes and played kickball, caught frogs in the creek and climbed trees. We didn’t have cellphones to call our parents and if we had, they wouldn’t have wanted us to bother them. We had to be in by the time the streetlights came on at dusk, but that was the only rule. No one wore bike helmets or seatbelts, there were no carseats, and my mom rode around holding and nursing my sister when she was an infant.
When my mom went grocery shopping she dropped us off in the toy aisle and we played until she was done. If she went to the mall, we’d go into the toy store while she shopped. And we were LITTLE kids when this happened. If she went to the library, we just bopped around the children’s section while she looked for books. I’m tellin’ you we were easy pickin’s and were lucky that nothing ever happened to us. When I ask her about it she just says that it was a different time and it was much safer. Except it wasn’t, because bad things happened to kids in the seventies too.
All I know is that I would have LOVED to have an iPOD when I was a child. I had a walkman when I was a teenager and I thought I was too cool. Now my daughter looks back on those clunky, tape playing things and laughs. How HUGE they were! How low tech! I would have loved to have baby dolls with voices that cooed and laughed at you! I would have loved to have interactive games and computers (you didn’t have a computer until you were in your twenties mom? OMG!!!)
And yet, even though my children think I was deprived and wonder how I made it though my childhood, I think it was fine. And I can’t WAIT for my grandchildren to tell my kids how sad they think THEIR childhoods were! My dad had to walk 2 miles through the snow to go to school. I had to look up vocabulary words in the dictionary by hand. Who knows what my own kids will later find out they were forced by the cruel hand of fate to do.
We live in interesting times…
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November 25, 2008 at 10:36 am
Tracie
I remember asking my mom to tape record, on a cassette, my soap when I was in school, so I could LISTEN to it when I got home. She’d put my radio next to the TV and record it! We used to carry large boom boxes around on our shoulders to listen to portable music! I did walk a mile to school! I also had to take public transportation to school and the library when I did my reports. And yes, we were outside all the time and came in when we heard my dads’ distinctive whistle calling us home. We thought Pong was the most awesome, or should I say COOL video game. I wouldn’t trade those memories for any of today’s technology. FYI, I’m ONLY 41.
November 25, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Jessica
being 22 i have a different point of veiw. I’ve always had a vcr, internet became popular while i was in middleschool, we have had a computer as long as i can remember (though my dad working on his phd was usually using it). BUT, because of this i’ve had to teach my mom how to cut and paste, show my grand mother repeatedly where the OFF button is on the phone, teach my mother in law how to use her dvd player and her car radio (but she is a little slow). At my last job (a aide in the special education room) i was expected to always fix the computers, though 1/2 of what i did was guess work, simply becasue i was 25 years younger than any o ne else in the room. i look forward to my 2mo old son to some day leave me confused and speachles son how to work some new gadget (cars that drive themselves!!!!!)
However, my techy generation dose not relate with other people we’d rather go to self checkout,order our food online, send a text rather than call, we even share photo’s with friends and family only online. socially we are far to casual , the way we dress, the way we type (i’m a big offender here), even the way we speak. i wonder if this trend will continue and how it will affect our society. we need human contact and too many in my generation don’t belive that so what will the future hold?
November 25, 2008 at 4:27 pm
norm
I remember wishing (in ‘77) I had the super eight film of Star Wars highlights.
I thought it would be so cool to actually own a few minutes of that movie…so I could play it any time I wanted.
(I settled for a vinyl record of highlights …)
I remember Pong too (which you can play on-line now)
And walkie talkies…
And cable TV when you only got one extra channel…with one movie (the Man With the Golden Gun) I don’t remember if it ran for a week or what…until they would run a new movie.
I also remember when you’d get dressed up to fly….it was a special thing.
December 2, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Pat
I was reminiscing on that this morning… when we were sick enough to stay home from school, we didn’t have anything good to watch on TV. Daytime TV was soap operas. No Sesame Street, no ‘celebrity talk shows’, and certainly no classic cartoon reruns. Nope.
Bed. Chicken soup. Soap Operas. Books.
Luckily, we didn’t have “You can pickup your child’s absence packet in the office after 3 o’clock. Please be sure that your child completes the classwork package before he/she attempts the homework package.”
We were allowed to be sick. My sibs & I could be out for a week and still get straight A’s. My children have so many long-term projects that they can’t miss a day.
sigh.