“Mr. Olson, tell us about the old days again!”
“OK young’uns. Gather ’round while I consult my aging brain for memories. Lemmee see...for starters, when I was a kid there was a night sky with stars visible in it.”
“Like stars in outer space movies?”
“Yep. You could see ’em from Earth late at night, even in some big cities.”
“Whoaa….”
“And some places, on summer nights you’d hear a chorus of amphibians and crickets, and the occasional whistle from a train carrying passengers.”
“What are amphibians?”
“Frogs and toads. They croaked before most of them croaked... if you get my drift.”
“What else did you hear, Mr. Olson?”
“Records. I heard music in the form of a black vinyl disks, about yay-big, that you had to rotate on a turntable with a diamond needle to play. I got very excited whenever I got a new record album... there was great artwork sometimes with posters and liner notes. Actually, vinyl has made a comeback.”
“Didn’t you just download songs?”
“No, there was no Internet. You had to buy everything from a store, kids. A physical store you walked or drove to. And if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to either go to a movie theatre or rent a VHS cassette.”
“A video on a...what?”
“Cassette. Music came on cassettes, too. You had a choice between black vinyl records and audio cassettes. And eventually CDs.”
“What’s a CD?
“Compact Disc. A music album that required a laser rather than a diamond needle to play. Star Trek stuff at the time! But never mind that, when I was your age you could just drop by someone’s home unannounced and asked if a friend could come out to play.”
“You didn’t text them first?”
“No, though you might call on the phone. But phones were attached to walls with cords. You couldn’t take them anywhere.”
“That sucks!”
“Totally!”
“Not really. We didn’t know otherwise, kiddos. And when people met to dine in restaurants they had to converse with each other — there were no handheld gadgets to fall back on. You could even do business with just a handshake because your word meant something.”
“Weird!”
“It was a different world. You’d see people putzing about, unrushed and unscheduled, conversing in public. Tattoos were for sailors and bikers. Fly swatters weren’t electrified, porches had swings, gym socks went up to your knees, Batman wasn’t a sinister neurotic, only birds tweeted, and you could buy a balsa wood airplane for a quarter. And there were candy cigarettes for kids!”
“What are cigarettes?”
“Smokes, cancer sticks, tobacco. Awful things, dangerous and smelly...they’re still around. So are the candy versions for kids if you look hard enough.”
“Can you smoke them?”
“The candy ones? No, they’re candy. Anyway, some things have changed for the better. Far fewer people smoke tobacco today, at least in this part of the world. DDT, asbestos, lead-based paint...all this dangerous stuff is gone or on the way out. Mail order uranium and lawn darts also went the way of the Dodo.”
“Dodo?”
“Never mind, that’s before my time too. Anyways, now I’m going to share some words from the past that may not mean much to you kids. Ready?”
“OK.”
“Milkmen. Mimeograph machines. Woolly caterpillars. Waterbeds. Silly Putty. Nerf toys. Zines. Tonsillectomies. Typewriters. Floppy discs. Rollerblades. Streaking. Comb-overs. Correction Fluid. Pocket calculators. Arcades. Answering machines. Encylopedias. Milkmen. Hitchhikers. Women in curlers. Nuns in habits. Spitoons. Polaroids. Cursive writing and writing letters. Full-time jobs. Facts...”
“Mr. Olson, stop!”
“What?”
“Aren’t there apps to replace all of those things?”
“Nope. You kids ever see the Terminator series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
(Heads shaking)
“Watch ‘em. They’re movies about the machines taking over. One of you better grow up to be John Connor, and fast.”
www.geoffolson.com
