For all you old 40 – 50, and even a few 30, somethings trying desperately not to feel old, here’s a few memories sure to ensure you fail.
Dig this, man, I remember when…
-I bought my first computer, turned it on, typed “do something” and it did nothing,
-I sat down at my brother-in-law’s computer, and did my first Internet search on something called “AOL.” Suddenly there were pictures of bare naked ladies all over the place,
-having an email address was a sure ticket to prestige and respect,
-computers in high school were “Tandy,” a Radio Shack brand that saved information on cassette tapes,
-microwaves were new, really big, and some were made that would “brown” things for housewives that didn’t trust them,
-there were housewives,
-CD’s came out and friends of mine said they totally gagged them with a spoon and they would never part with their eight-tracks,
-Pong was the only video game you could play at home and for some reason it was fun,
-only rich people had “color” TV and remote controls were the size of a Snoopy lunch box and we got four channels, two of which were Canadian,
-my brother-in-law got a “car phone” bigger than a snoopy lunch box,
-my parents bought one of the first Toyotas sold in the States and it was such a piece of junk they garbaged it a year later,
-the Russians were the Dark Side, and we all watched “The Day After,” a TV show about nuclear holocaust, then had discussion groups at the high school about how we did not want to die nor glow in the dark,
-Communists were lurking behind every hippie ready to turn us into mind slaves,
-I typed my homework on a typewriter and had to use one of those stupid typing erasers which inevitably tore the page and I ended up handing in something that looked like the dog had digested it,
-I got my first “correcting” typewriter” that had a little digital screen to preview what I printed, or erased until I made a hole,
-cameras used something called “film” which ensured 90 percent of your pictures were out of focus,
-cartoons were mostly on Saturday morning, and all had morals like “love is all you need – dig, man?”
-Michael Jackson was a boy in one of those cartoons called the Jackson 5ive,
-looking up the spelling of Jackson 5ive, or looking up anything for that matter, entailed going to the library, looking in the card catalogue, copying down some cryptic code, then wandering around basement for hours before you figured out someone had already checked out The History of Cartoon Spelling,
-gas hit a dollar a gallon, and we all thought cars would soon be studio apartments (check out a movie called “Americathon” – people live in their cars – oh, and on a complete tangent, Jay Leno boxes his mother – see YouTube),
-minimum wage hit $2 an hour!
-the first local mall opened, then closed because three others had opened, then re-opened, then closed again, now it’s a box store,
-people smoked cigarettes not only in bars, but in restaurants, elevators, movie theaters, and bathrooms,
-people drank beer while they smoked and drove in cars that didn’t even have seat belts,
-Playboy magazine first showed pubic hair,
-the first McDonald’s came to town and suddenly all high school students had a goal to cruising,
-some shoe company named Nike had big “waffle” soles, used for the new invention of “running,”
And, furthermore, that was one really long sentence.
But I also remember when we still used these stupid combustible engines that actually burned fossil fuels and made smoke and… oh, yeah. And I also remember when Israel was at war with all its neighbors and Muslims swore they would desecrate it and no one got along and it was like one never ending crisis… oops. And the Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan and could not escape and… well, it’s a little different. Oh, and I remember when the economy plunged and no one could get a job and… well, I guess that’s more like déjà vu. Also, there was prejudice everywhere, 3D movies were all the rage, and no one liked politicians.
All right. Whatever. I’m looking forward to writing this in about 30 years when I remember the time when people still had wars, there were energy crises, and people hated each other because God told them too. Those would be good memories to have in the far distant past.
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