I turned 30 in July. It's not that old. And most of the time, I don't feel old. And then I look around and realize how much things have changed since I was a kid.
- Our first computer not only did not connect to the internet, it didn't have Windows or a color monitor.
- When we finally got the internet, it used the phone line and made all kinds of screeches while connecting. If anyone needed the phone line, you had to get offline. And it was slooooooow. Oh, and we had ONE computer. For the entire family.
- The printer was a dot matrix and also very slow. You had to make sure the dots on the edge were lined up right or it would print crooked. And then you had to carefully tear off the dotted edge and tear the pages apart after it was done.
- Gas was something like $1 a gallon when I was in high school.
- When I learned about the planets, there were 9, not 8.
- I didn't have a cell phone until I was 20. It also had a black and white screen. I'm not sure it had texting capabilities, let alone internet access.
- That means we relied on landlines. I remember when we first got a cordless phone. The phone before that was in the kitchen and had a super long cord, because you were attached to the wall when you used it. But at least we had touch tone phones. Before that, there were rotary phones. My grandma had one and it took forever to dial anything. Also, we had one phone number for the family and people usually memorized the numbers they dialed most often. I barely know anyone's phone number anymore, but I can remember our phone number when I was little and my best friend's number.
- Our tv didn't have a remote, let alone the ability to pause. You had to get up and walk to the tv if you wanted to turn it on or off or change the channel or the volume. We didn't have cable and there was no streaming anything. If we wanted to watch a movie, we had to either buy it or rent it. And movies were on video cassettes, not discs. You had to rewind them. I also remember when we got our first VCR. Before that, we couldn't watch anything that wasn't on live tv.
- Rather than having entire networks of cartoons, they were on Saturday mornings. We got up early and watched cartoons for a few hours on Saturday morning before playing outside. Because that's the only time they were on.
- Music on CD didn't become popular until middle school. Again, we used cassette tapes before that. If we wanted to listen to a song, we had to fast forward to that part of the tape. And that was if we had it on tape. Otherwise, we had to wait for the DJ to play it on the radio. At my house, we also had the 8 track tapes and vinyl records that came before tapes.
- If we wanted to know how to get somewhere, we used a map or asked a person for directions. We couldn't look it up on Google maps or use a GPS or phone to direct us.
- Back to phones, we couldn't text. Email wasn't a primary mode of communication either. I got my first email address in 9th grade. Some people had fax machines, but not everyone. The most reliable way to communicate to someone far away was by letter. I remember stamps being like 23 cents. They're now 49 cents.
- If you called and someone wasn't home, you had to try again later. Eventually, we got an answer machine, which used a tape to record messages. And there was this thing called a busy signal. No call waiting. No leaving a voicemail. Oh, and no caller ID. Which meant you could make prank phone calls. But you had no way of knowing if someone called unless you had an answering machine and they left a message. And if you wanted to call someone but didn't have their phone number, you had to look it up in the phone book. That's the book that's left on our doorstep a few times a year and goes into the drawer until the updated one replaces it.
- Video cameras were giant bulky things that the entire video cassette went in. My family didn't have one. The videos were usually shaky and blurry and the audio wasn't very good.
- Then there were picture cameras. You looked through the viewfinder and clicked the button. You hoped that the picture was clear and used up the rest of the pictures on the roll before dropping it off to be developed. A few days later, you got back a packet of pictures and hoped they turned out.
- As for books, you could buy them at bookstores or borrow them from the library. To find out if the library had it, you had to use the card catalog to try to find it. If the library didn't have it, you were out of luck.
- Research was done at the library or using an encyclopedia. It generally required a lot of reading to find the information you were looking for.
- If you wanted to buy something, you drove from store to store until you found it.
- I also remember when we got our first microwave. Food was either cold or made on the stove or in the oven.
- I remember getting a Nintendo too. I didn't have much interest in it, but I remember Duck Hunt and having to blow in the cartridges to get them to work.
- Despite all of those things, we were more up to date than my grandparents. I remember a rotary phone, a black and white tv (and watching the Dick Van Dyke show), and a tv with knobs instead of buttons. And I don't remember them ever having a computer.
When I stop and think about it, things have changed so much in my lifetime. I can do more things on my phone than I could on the tv, computer, and stereo combined when I was little. While I was typing this, Steve was streaming music he just bought online onto the tv and used his phone to record the girls dancing and singing to it. And then he streamed that video to the tv. Anything we want, we can get almost immediately. A book? I could download it onto my phone and read it. A song? Same thing. If I want some odd item I can't find at the store, I can order it online and have it in 2 days. I can text my mom pictures or even videos of the girls. I'm not saying this is bad, although I don't think it's helped my impatience any. It's just a bit crazy how much things have changed. We had one computer when I was little. We eventually got a printer. We had a tv and VCR. And we had a cordless phone and one or two corded ones and an answering machine. At this moment, in my house, we have two smart phones, two cordless phones (with voicemail), two tvs, two Chromecasts, a VCR, a DVR, a blu-ray player, a Wii, an Xbox, a desktop computer, a laptop, a printer, two Kindles, two Kindle Fires, two stereos, a boombox, and I think Steve has his work laptop and tablet. We also have miscellaneous other electronics, like an MP3 player, two digital cameras, and Gameboy Advance. No wonder we have to limit screen time. It's all too easy to spend hours a day on one screen or another now. There was so little to do on a computer back in the late 80s/early 90s that it didn't hold my attention for long. And then I was off to read or play outside.
When I tell my kids stories about how different things were when I was their age, they're going to think I lived in the Dark Ages. Their eyes will get big and they'll think I'm making this up, until Steve confirms it. And then I can tell them about getting tangled in the phone cord and the embarrassing story of how I called my crush. I can tell them about mixed tapes and my Walkman. I can describe what the Internet and the busy signal sounded like, because they'll never hear the real thing. I can tell them about penpals and show them the cool way to fold notes. You know, the way we did before texting. Back in the Dark Ages.
