40 years on this planet and a lot has changed. Technology is so much better than it was as a child, and I am sure that it will only get better. For those of you who read this blog and are over the age of 20 I am sure you will get a smile out of some of the things I remember.
Cell phones amaze me. As a child we had an avocado green rotary dial phone that hung on the kitchen wall. It was understood that phone calls were a luxury and not something that we could afford for idle gossip. In Wellsville you could dial 4 and the last four of the number you were calling in town. We also had a party line. There was a time limit on these calls and you typically had another person who spent their time listening to everyone else's conversations.
I never dreamed growing up that someday almost everyone I knew would have their own phone and they could take it with them wherever they went. When I was a child it was a HUGE deal when Mom was able to find a chord that would allow her to talk on the phone while standing across the room!
I was one of the first people in my family to purchase a cell phone. For those of you who know me well, I believe this is when I officially became a phone whore. I was very proud of this brick shaped phone. It only cost me a dollar a day and $.50 a minute to use.
Television...we had 3 channels, two we could watch without having to go outside with the pipe wrench and turning the antenna while Dad would yell, "a little more! Back! Wait! Right there! Nope, you went too far! Go back!"
Now we all bitch because there is never anything on and we pay too much for all the channels we get. Most of us end up watching the shows we watched as kids for free on channels we pay extra for now.
Cars were big, heavy, metal and you could use regular or unleaded gasoline. As kids, we could go in and pay for the gas and get a pack of smokes for Dad while he pumped. Now we have to pre-pay in most places and you have to be 18 to buy those smokes. You also can't get a pack of cigarettes and 2 gallons of gas for five bucks any longer.
Words...Gay meant happy, Queer meant odd, retarded was the proper name for kids on the short bus and nobody knew what LOL, OMG, or what a text message was. If you needed to get a message to a friend, you rode your bike to their house and left it on their door, or actually talked to their face.
A lot has changed in my life, but one thing remains constant. A trip to Walmart will leave you at some point with an expression on your face that says, WTF?
