How things have changed "In my day...."
I remember on long road trips my parents would give us the "back in my day" speech and tell us how it was when they were young. They described that there was no TV and when they did get TV it was only in black and white for a long time. "Wow no TV" we used to say but how did you survive, what did you fill your days with.
This got me thinking, what will I tell my children in my "back in my day" talk, what has changed over the years since I was young. I realised that it is going to be a dam big talk over multiple road trips, as so much has changed.
They are going to think we are sooooo old when I tell them that when I was little not only were there no cell phones our phones didn't have buttons on them and when it rang we didn't just pick it up, we had to wait to see if it was our ring, as we were on a party line. If we called a business, there would be no automated voice telling us what to press or say, we actually got a real person on the line and chances are they were located in an office down the road definitely not India or Indonesia.
How am I going to explain that we didn't have a computer until I was 8years old. When we got our trusty Amstrad, there were no flashy graphics or pictures, if we wanted anything we had to type it into DOS. Games were restricted to snakes, tennis (two lines and a ball) and battleships. We had no Play Station 1, 2, or 3 or PSP. No Nintendo Wii or other virtual games you can actually play and see it on the TV. Not only did we not have wireless internet we didn't have broadband or even a connection through the telephone line, we just DIDN'T have internet. There were no social networking sites, no tweeting, no email, no googling things you didn't know and definitely no blogs. People had to actually talk to each other to share their thoughts and feelings, we wrote letters and went to the post office to send it. If we didn't know something you had to ask dad or look it up in the giant and super heavy encyclopaedias. If you wanted to know something ,about someone you had to ask the village gossip rather than just googling them.
We had no digital cameras and online photo albums, we actually had to use a camera with film in it, then go and get it developed and put them in a real album. If you wanted to carry pictures of your friends and family around, you didn't just pull out your cell phone. You had to carry a little album around in your purse.
Back when I was little there were no iPods, let alone iPod nano, no dvds not even CD's. We used to have walkmans that played a tape. I am thinking by the time my kids are 7 or 8 years old that tapes will no longer be around. All of the tape players would have gone off to Florida to live with the record players that retired years ago. I can probably visit a museum to show my kids a record player, that I used to play my Muppets record on ( how old am I feeling right now). When we were young we had a big old box of a TV, if you wanted to move it you needed approximately 4 strong men it was so heavy. It only had 4 channels on it, luckily we only ever had 2 channels to watch when we were young so no worry about running out of space.
So many things have changed it is nearly impossible to mention them all, I mean shops weren't even open on Sundays, shopping wasn't a pass time, we went shopping when we needed things. Everything was simpler, or was that because I was young. What's scary is that things are changing every second, what will my children tell their children when they have their "In my day" talk.
This got me thinking, what will I tell my children in my "back in my day" talk, what has changed over the years since I was young. I realised that it is going to be a dam big talk over multiple road trips, as so much has changed.
They are going to think we are sooooo old when I tell them that when I was little not only were there no cell phones our phones didn't have buttons on them and when it rang we didn't just pick it up, we had to wait to see if it was our ring, as we were on a party line. If we called a business, there would be no automated voice telling us what to press or say, we actually got a real person on the line and chances are they were located in an office down the road definitely not India or Indonesia.
How am I going to explain that we didn't have a computer until I was 8years old. When we got our trusty Amstrad, there were no flashy graphics or pictures, if we wanted anything we had to type it into DOS. Games were restricted to snakes, tennis (two lines and a ball) and battleships. We had no Play Station 1, 2, or 3 or PSP. No Nintendo Wii or other virtual games you can actually play and see it on the TV. Not only did we not have wireless internet we didn't have broadband or even a connection through the telephone line, we just DIDN'T have internet. There were no social networking sites, no tweeting, no email, no googling things you didn't know and definitely no blogs. People had to actually talk to each other to share their thoughts and feelings, we wrote letters and went to the post office to send it. If we didn't know something you had to ask dad or look it up in the giant and super heavy encyclopaedias. If you wanted to know something ,about someone you had to ask the village gossip rather than just googling them.
We had no digital cameras and online photo albums, we actually had to use a camera with film in it, then go and get it developed and put them in a real album. If you wanted to carry pictures of your friends and family around, you didn't just pull out your cell phone. You had to carry a little album around in your purse.
Back when I was little there were no iPods, let alone iPod nano, no dvds not even CD's. We used to have walkmans that played a tape. I am thinking by the time my kids are 7 or 8 years old that tapes will no longer be around. All of the tape players would have gone off to Florida to live with the record players that retired years ago. I can probably visit a museum to show my kids a record player, that I used to play my Muppets record on ( how old am I feeling right now). When we were young we had a big old box of a TV, if you wanted to move it you needed approximately 4 strong men it was so heavy. It only had 4 channels on it, luckily we only ever had 2 channels to watch when we were young so no worry about running out of space.
So many things have changed it is nearly impossible to mention them all, I mean shops weren't even open on Sundays, shopping wasn't a pass time, we went shopping when we needed things. Everything was simpler, or was that because I was young. What's scary is that things are changing every second, what will my children tell their children when they have their "In my day" talk.
So true!! Charlotte was given a pull-along toy phone for her birthday and it is an old fashioned style...I said to Bevan "She'll have no idea (and probably won't believe us) when we tell her it is actually meant to be a phone!!"
ReplyDeleteI know, my daughter came across on of the real big old phone in a toybox somewhere. I tried to explain that it was a phone. She gave me a funny look but talked to it anyway.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about how much things had changed until i wrote this.