How Did We Survive?

Good morning everyone. Was just typing out an email to a business associate earlier, though I am usually a good speller, for some reason my fingers weren't cooperating quite so well. Spell checker ended up doing a lot of work as a result. Isn't spell checker wonderful? Sometimes it even corrects things without bothering me, such as when I transpose a couple of letters in a word, it just quietly switches them to the way they're supposed to be and goes on. I remember the old way. I would type a 'rough draft', wasting who knows how many pieces of paper ripped out of the typewriter, wadded up and thrown away in disgust. After the rough draft was finished, usually I'd have someone else peruse it for errors and correct as necessary. Then I'd type a 'final' copy. If you hit the wrong key, there was always 'white out', some typewriters actually came with correction ribbon, but if the letter was real important, you really didn't want a lot of corrections, it gave a bad impression.

This got me to thinking, how did we survive when we were younger? Think of all of the changes that today's kids have grown up with that to we parents are new inventions. It's astounding how many things have changed. These aren't 'earth shattering' inventions that sound cool but don't really pertain to us; these are changes that affect every one of us in personal ways every day.

TV. Of course, most of us grew up with a TV or rarely two in the house. You remember TV, 3 (or for some lucky people 4) channels (ok, PBS was there too, but did many of us care?). TV, three whole channels. Channel surfing wasn't really that big of a deal. If there was nothing on one of those three channels, you were just out of luck. Lord forbid that the president was on, the whole evening was shot. Who remembers the sign off screen? When the TV station "ends this station's daily broadcast" and played the national anthem. Cartoons, Saturday morning, on one day we could actually sleep in, we got up at the crack of dawn to watch the "Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner Comedy Hour". Why? Because Saturday morning cartoons were it, if you missed them, there were no cartoons again until next Saturday. Speaking of cartoons, remember the Peanuts specials? Once a year, around the holidays, the Peanuts specials were big events. You simply did not miss them, even though you had seen them every year since you could remember. News, twice a day there was local news and national news. Once in the early evening and once just before bed. That was it, if you wanted news, you watched then.

Now, you have more channels than you could possibly keep up with, almost literally something for everyone at any time of the day. Cartoons, my son has at least 3 choices of cartoons 24 hours a day and if he doesn't like any of them, he has the cartoon 'on-demand' channel. News, you can get news anytime, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CNN Headline News, and more. Of course who needs TV for news anymore, the Internet will give you more than you ever wanted to know.

Phones. Remember that old rotary dial phone? When you were on the phone, you were connected to it by a 3-6 foot cord too. No caller ID, no call waiting, no answering machine (who doesn't screen?). Now you can take your phone with you, know who's calling you, look up numbers on the phone and put your entire list of phone numbers on it so that you can call everyone you want to with a single push of a button. I often wonder as I see people drive by chatting on their cell phone "how did you survive without that?"

Just sit back and think of all the things that have changed in our daily lives. Computers, online shopping, pay at the pump gas, fax machines, email, copiers, GPS, 'on-demand' TV, VCRs/DVDs, self checkout groceries, ATMs (remember having to get to the bank before it closed on Friday to get money?), just so many changes that it's hard to think of them all.

It's funny, when I relay any of this to either of my children, they look at me with the same look that I used to look at my father with when he would tell me about his childhood. I wonder, when our children have children, what will they have to 'remember'?