Reflections from a Non-techy Childhood

While out for my daily walk this morning, I was thinking about the DVD release of Disney's Princess and the Frog and how excited my GD was to watch the movie again and add it to her ever-growing collection. I thought of how lovely the animation was and how lively the songs were and it made me think of what I used to enjoy watching when I was her age....my Show N Tell recorder, it had a filmstrip with a 45 record with the corresponding story on one side and a neat song on the flip side. In a dark room, the Show N Tell was the bomb, well, for me anyway, couldn't quite grasp why mom and dad did not find it as entrancing. Now, we have Alice In Wonderland in 3D with surround sound..

I remember before our microwave we had popcorn in a dome popper that you put pieces of butter in the lidded top to "melt" onto the popping kernals, yummy stuff, but then something even better came around!! Jiffy Pop!! Oh yeah!! There was excitement just watching it expand on the stove and you actually got an upper body workout with all the manual shaking over the burner. Now, we have the microwave, not as fun, just quicker,,,,,okay, maybe tastes better too with more flavors and we can get it light as well, but really, we were not worried about "diet foods" back then, just your basic 4 food groups.

I recall having the 3 main stations and PBS when I was a kid, not many choices right, so we all sat together to watch TV, now, there are 100s of stations and everyone scurries off to their corners to watch what they want, and since it is now 24 hours a day, there is always something on, no more need of the board games I used to play as a child now, kids probably refer to them as "bored games" behind our backs now folks since most pale in the "excitement" factor compared to today's X-Boxes, Playstations, Wii, Leapsters, and the multitude of other attention grabbers that are out there.

Now, I am knocking the advancement of technology, I am the first one to go nuts if I leave my cell phone at home, even though I spent the first 20+ years of my life not even thinking of having one, or my computer which is my livelihood as well as provider of information and entertainment, or my microwave which can fix me a meal in 3 minutes. However, I do miss some of the simpler enjoyments that did not revolve around something electronic, maybe that is why I still continue to read books daily, not Kindle or something on the computer, but a nice book, both to myself and to my GD. What will the next 20 years bring? I cannot imagine, but I am certain that I will be able to look back to today and find things I will be missing from the 20-teens.

Enjoy your day and take a look at a snippet of what caused all of these reflections.