Back in my Day

.Craig Cardilino

I have had a few “back in my day” conversations lately and it got me to thinking.  I remember hearing stories from my parents’ childhood and grandparents’ childhood and thinking “How did they live like that?”  No offense, but no TV?  Ugh.

This led me to thinking what stories I will tell my children about my childhood that will inevitably lead them to thinking “How did you live like that?”  So this one is for them.  Kids, this is how I used to live.

There was no Internet.  If we had a question about something you had to look it up in an encyclopedia, go to the library, or most often, forget about it and hope it’s not something that comes up again.

We had to do all of our math homework based on what we remembered from class.  There was no Wolfram Alpha that did it all for us.

If you wanted to buy something, you had to go to a store and write a check.  Or you had to wait to receive a catalog and fill out an order sheet and mail it to them.  Then you had to wait for them to deliver it.  By the way – once it shipped – you had absolutely no idea where it was until it showed up to your door.

If you made a funny or embarrassing home video it was impossible to show it to millions of people.  That is, unless Bob Sagat would show it to the world on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

There was no Facebook.  If you wanted to know what your friends were up to you had to call them.  If they were already on the phone you would get a busy signal and you’d have to call back later.  If they didn’t answer?  It would ring and ring and ring and ring until you hung up.  If they weren’t home?  Well that’s the next one…

There were no cell phones.  To talk on the phone you had to be attached to a cord in the wall.  Eventually there were cordless phones – but you couldn’t walk down your driveway without getting the inevitable static.  And we were really excited by that technology.

Eventually we got these cool things called pagers.  How did they work?  Well they were really useful.  Someone would have to be at a phone.  They would call your pager number.  The phone would beep and they would type in your phone number.  Then this little box attached to our pants would vibrate and beep – mine had 3 different tones to choose from! – and the box would show you what numbers the person typed in.  Then you would have to drive around looking for a pay phone (a phone on the side of the street that would accept money for the ability to place a call) and call that number back.  Then you could talk to each other.  Talk about convenient!

We were not able to text anything to anyone on anything.

We didn’t have computers at first.  When I was 7 or 8 we got our first computer.  I won’t get into all the technical details of that machine but let’s just say that my phone is about 1000 times better a computer.

Apple was a joke of a company and only 3 weirdos in your city had one of their computers.

Books were made of paper.  You would get them from the library or buy them.

People read newspapers on a regular basis rather than solely use them to start fires in your backyard.

Email didn’t exist.  If you wanted to write something to someone you would write it out by hand, buy a stamp, and then mail it to them.  7 weeks later they would get it and be able to read about things in your life that are outdated and probably not important anymore.

Speaking of mail – you would have to mail checks to pay your bills.

Seat belts were optional.  For all ages.

People would smoke cigarettes inside restaurants and bars.  If you didn’t smoke you could sit in the non-smoking section that was separated by a 4 foot tall barrier or nothing at all.  Guess what?  The barrier didn’t stop the smoke.

If you wanted to watch a specific TV show – you had to be home at the time it was on TV.  If you weren’t home when it was on TV?  You never ever saw it.

HD-TV?  Nope.  We didn’t have 1080p.  I’m pretty sure we had 4p.

When you rented a movie it would be on videotape.  They charged you extra if you didn’t rewind it before you returned it.

Trampolines had no nets around the sides to stop us from falling off.  The point of trampolines for us was simply to be able to jump really high when we were throwing our friends off the side onto the ground.  The springs were almost always rusty metal that was not covered by anything.  Needless to say your Grandparents wouldn’t buy me one.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, as I have nearly doubled my allotted words for this post.  I will continue in an upcoming post kids, but for now that should explain a little bit about why I am the way I am.  Now let’s post this blog post on the Internet –then  throw it onto Facebook – and watch some Netflix instant on our HD TV.