I get in the car, put on my seatbelt, and check my rearview mirror to make sure that it’s straight. I put the key in the ignition, and I turn the radio on. Sometimes it’s the satellite radio. But most of the time it’s a CD. Not just any CD, a mix CD.
It’s a dying phenomenon, and it’s about time we had a funeral for it.
Actually, I think what it’s more apt to have a funeral for is the death of “the way it used to be”. Technology has dealt the last blow, but the final nail in the coffin of the 20th century. We have become a one-click society, an instant gratification nation that can’t get what they want fast enough. Computers don’t boot up quickly enough. It takes too long to receive a text message; it takes too long for a YouTube video to load. These are chief complaints. Really? Five years ago, YouTube didn’t even exist. Ten years ago, there weren’t iPods and iPhones and iPads and Droids. There wasn’t Facebook and MySpace, and instant messenger was in its infancy. Like Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption said, “the world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.”
Let me assure you that I like modern times. “The good old days” might have been thus, but they also had polio, segregation, and lead in the paint. Modern advances are good. I know that I’m only 22 and I’m already complaining about “the way things used to be.” But in my defense, when I was growing up, things were FAR different compared to the kids that are growing up now. Kids today will never understand what it was like to come of age at the same time that technology was.
It has been widely acknowledged that my generation is the last to be born “without” technology. Sure, there were cell phones and the internet when I was born. But back then, cell phones weighed about 2 lbs. and had so many parts that they came in a pouch. They were referred to as “bag phones.” The internet connected through your phone line and it took about 10 minutes just to log on. Don’t get me wrong. I love having the world at my fingertips. I love being able to have a mobile internet in my pocket. If I wanted to, I could purchase a swimming pool, watch a video of a dog with two legs, check the weather forecast in Orange County, or book a flight to Christchurch, New Zealand…all from my phone. I love that. I think that’s the coolest thing in the whole world, actually. Who doesn’t want that kind of ease in their lives? I sure do.
While it’s hard to imagine a life without the prevalence of the Internet, I suppose what I'm mourning is the loss of pure, innocent childhood. I can remember waking up at about 8 AM on summer mornings, and staying outside and playing until the sun went down. The mosquitoes would be eating us alive, we would be starting to get cold, and our mothers would have to scream at the top of their lungs to get us to come inside. The only time I went indoors was when my mom took me to the library. Nowadays, when I go outside in the summer, I have to wonder if possibly every single child in the neighborhood failed their grade and is at summer school, for there is hardly anyone out playing. I simply can’t understand why kids don’t want to play outdoors when the weather is perfectly fine and they have no school obligations whatsoever.
Have things really changed that much in say, fifteen years?
Honestly, do kids read books anymore? Do they write letters, or use a landline phone? Do they still go outside and simply toss a baseball, or swing, without wondering who is going to text them or what Wii game they’re going to play next?
I hope pure childhood isn’t lost. I hope that it has simply evolved. Maybe children will text their friends to come over instead of riding their bikes to their house, maybe they will read books on their iPads instead of checking them out at the library, and maybe they will friend someone on Facebook before they become friends with them in real life.
But I will be stubborn. I will fill out job applications by hand; I will mail things through the US Postal Service. I will buy things in a real store, and order my pizza on the phone. I will buy books in a bookstore, and read the newspaper, not online. I will remember glass ketchup bottles, Disney movies (videocassettes!) that came in those huge white plastic cases, and life before 3-D movies. I will remember when you had to wait to have a roll of film developed, and when Polaroid pictures still existed. I will recall when the only thing viral was the rhinovirus, when twitter was the sound a bird made, and when a reading a text meant opening your textbook at school.
A thirteen year old wonders why I painstakingly take the time to pick songs out, get a CD, and burn it for my car. She wonders why I just don’t put a playlist on my iPod. Well, I don’t really have a good answer to that. But I will tell her to go home and ask her mom if she remembers when video killed the radio star. Because I know one day I’ll tell my daughter that I remember when iTunes killed the video star.
;)
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