Kids born around the turn of the century (like mine) are digital natives, born into an age of technology that the rest of us have watched develop and evolve. They either assume that the lifestyle they take for granted and enjoy was always there, or that everyone over 30 was born in the Stone Age.
So, to satisfy their curiosity, and on behalf of those of us who didn’t have programming code embedded in their DNA, here are a few things Gen Whatever-Letter-We’re-On-Right-Now need to know.
“What was it like back in the olden days, when you were a little girl … you know, before electricity?”
Electricity was around before we were born. But gas stoves still make the best grilled cheese sandwiches.
We only had one TV channel, and it didn’t run all night. It signed on in the morning and signed off at night. If you were bored, you would sit and watch the test pattern, which was a very interesting series of circles and lines. If you were extra bored, you switched to a dead channel and watched the snow.
For a long time, all shows were in black and white. I was six or seven before I discovered that Big Bird was yellow.
We didn’t have remote controls. You had to get up and turn a dial if you wanted the TV louder or softer. Better yet, you made your little sister get up and change it, and while she was doing that, you took her space on the couch.
You only got to see cartoons on Saturday mornings. Woe betide you if you had extra lessons on a Saturday; you’d miss Spiderman and the Flintstones for a whole term.
Once in a while, for no reason whatsoever, your radio suddenly started yelling at you in Spanish. Hence the expression “To cut in like a Spanish radio station.”
When we were out of the house and needed to talk to someone, we had things called “phone booths”, which were teeny little houses with huge phones in them, scattered randomly along the road. You needed 25 cents to make a call, so you usually kept a handful of coins jangling in your purse for this purpose. Most of the time, the phones didn’t work.
You actually had to remember people’s phone numbers, or write them down on paper. If you made a mistake while dialling, you had to hang up and dial again. There was no Back button.
When you needed to buy something, you had to leave your house and go to store. Often, it was your only trip out for the week.
On weekends and during school vacations we rode across the Sahara, forged the Amazon, and hunted crocodiles … all in the empty lot down the street. Our vittles were crackers and peanut butter. Nobody cared what we got up to, as long as we got back before dark.
“You mean, when you were a kid they didn’t have Internet?”
When we had research to do we used these things called “encyclopaedia”, which were thick books that came in sets of 20 or 30, and took up a whole shelf in the library. They were heavy enough to knock a grown man to the floor. We actually had to write stuff down; there was no Wikipedia to cut and paste from.
Power went out. A lot. If it happened at night, you went outside in the yard and played games like “Gypsy in the Moonlight” and “Jane and Louisa will Soon Come Home.” We laughed and told jokes. We didn’t stand by the wireless router and scream at it until power came back.
We talked to our friends face to face. And we knew their real names.
So, yeah, we were born before the Internet. Instead of Playstation we had “Play-in-the-yard”. It may not sound like much to you, but, oh, we had the time of our lives.
Any questions? Any memories to share? Leave them in the comments.
