Technology

Does technology ever just blow your mind?  I was having tech flashbacks the other day as I handed my Berry to my son and said, “Learn how to use Google maps so you can navigate”.  Wow, right!  I then flashbacked to when I was in elementary school and we had a TV with 4 channels, no remote, and cartoons were only on Saturdays.  Cordless phone, what was that?  All phones were large, clunky and attached to a wall by a cord!

My favorite is the time when our old Mercury wood paneled station wagon (not quite the metallic pea of Family Vacation, but close) broke down in the Stater Bros. parking lot and my mom, sister and I had to listen to Captain and Tennille on the 8 track till dad came.  I know I just severely dated myself by saying “8 track”, some of you youngsters may have thought an 8 track was an urban legend, but no, they were real!

Kids are so spoiled by technology that when we take a picture with our digital cameras they ask, “Can I see the picture?”  Remember when everyone used 35 mm and you had to wait till the whole roll was used, then wait a week for processing to be able to see your pictures at Disneyland?  Now we upload our SD card and play a slide show through FIOS on our TV, all within 5 minutes of taking the pictures!

My kids ask what kind of computer I had when I was a kid…computer, you were lucky if you had a type writer!  Look up computer in my Dad’s 1968 Encyclopedia collection and it shoes a large mechanical box the size of my living room with a very intelligent looking man in a white coat with a pocket protector standing next to it.  Computers didn’t really hit the scene until college for me and even then they were a boring little box with green letters and were only used for writing papers, unless you wanted to play Pong!

“What kind of Video Games did you play?”  The only ones we could, the Pac-Man and Tetris, oh, and don’t forget Frogger.  You had to convince your parents to take you to a pizza parlor to play them; our favorite was The Blue Banjo up in Nevada.  Those were some special nights, pizza and a game or two on Pac-Man!

We have come a long way in 30 years with the technology boom.  My kid story of, “Hey, we had phones connected to the wall, 4 channels with no remote, and you had to wait to get home to call someone isn’t as good as my Dad’s.  I think I will steal his to relay to my kids when they need a “look how good you’ve got it” speech…I had to get up 2 hours before school ride my bike to deliver papers all over town and I made my skateboard out of old roller skate wheels and a piece of wood.  Yep, I will use his, still sounds more hard knocks than mine!

Enjoy your technology today and remind your kids about the covered wagon days of corded phones, no remotes, and 35 mm pics.