As the 30th anniversary of my birth year approaches I am excited, ready to embrace my 30's. It is a great time full of family making, career, health and wellness, friends and family. After all, haven't you heard that 30 is the new 2o?
I cannot help but feel old however as I look back at how much things have changed in my short 30 years on this earth. I used to think my parents and my friends parents were old as they used to talk about playing video games and an Atari and listen to music on a record player or Eight track tapes. I just thought they must be ancient to have such crazy devices.
Now that I look back as a parent, my kids are gonna think I am an old crazy lady when I tell them that I learned to type on a type writer.
That is right, in middle school typing class, this is what was available to me. You put the paper in the back and roll it through, then start typing. If you make a mistake then you push a back space button that covers up the mistake with white out. If you make too many mistakes then you should just start the entire document over cause it looks like crap. No, you cannot save the changes and no, there is no spell check, so you better make sure you know what you are spelling before you type it in.
When computers did come out they were these awesome Apple computers where the screen was green and the letter you typed in were white. If you wanted to save something you had written then you did it on a big floppy disk. I used to play great games on this computer at my friend Kara's house there was Oregon Trail or Super Sluth. Will my kids believe me when I tell them I didn't have a "real" computer until I went to college and that is when I learned how to type. That is when I got my first e-mail address at age 18. Yes, before that people actually had to call you or send you a written invitation to a party. Evites didn't exist until my mid twenties.
My first video gaming experience was on this bad boy, the original Nintendo. I had lots of fun playing Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and Tetris. OK, lets face it, I have ALWAYS sucked at video games. But I had a lot of fun trying with this beautiful machine.
I got one of these hand held Game boys one year for Christmas. Pretty much the most awesome thing ever (at the time). It wasn't a colored screen or anything, but it did the job.
This is called a VHS, it was all the rage when I was growing up. You stuck one of these bad boys into a thing called a VCR (pictured below(yes I still have one in 2010 cause I am just not ready to give it up)), and it plays the movie. There is really no such thing as a scene selection, however if you want to skip a part in the movie you can fast forward. When you are done watching the movie you have to press a button called "rewind" to get the movie back to the beginning, this will take a couple of minutes.
What we have here is a VCR/DVD combo pack. By the time my kids hit 18 I am guessing they will have no clue what a DVD player is, so best to show that now as well. These two devices are used to watch movies.
iPods are very cool, but in the 90's these were even cooler. Everyone had a boom box that played the radio and had a tape player. This was every kid's dream Christmas Present when I was growing up. Pretty sure it is still a dream for my husband.
If you have a tape player, you can play these little devices, called cassette tapes. They fit nicely into the tape player and play music quite well. My first tape was Milli Vanilli who turned out to be two guys who got famous by lip-sinching (how does that happen?) This tape, is a classic 90's tape; Dirty Dancing was one of the best sound tacks of its day.
If you wanted to go on a walk and listen to music, you used one of these amazing devices, called a WALKMAN. Insert cassette tape, push play, put on head phone and walk around. It was the first of it's kind. One of my prized possessions growing up.
Growing up there were no cell phones. We actually had to use a house phone, something I think few homes have anymore. If you were out and about and needed to call home, you had to stop at one of these peculiar places; a telephone booth that contained a pay phone. You could go into the booth, put 35 cents into the phone and make a call. Back in my day, you had to remember every one's phone numbers if you wanted to call them, now with cell phones I barley know my own phone number.
I am beginning to feel like the advancement of technology kinda makes me dumber, does any one else feel this way?
As I got a little older, the pager was where it was at. You carried this stupid little square device and if someone wanted to talk to you they would call a number; then their number would come up on the pager and you would find a phone to call that person back. When my dad bought me one, I pretty much thought I was so flippin' cool, but in hind sight, the pager was really stupid. That may be why it didn't last long (outside the hospital setting), and cell phones came in and they NEVER went out. But they have gotten much smaller and much more complex and versatile.
Let us not forget that there was not always a Nikon D40 to take great pictures. I started out with one of these cameras, called a Polaroid camera. You took a picture with the camera, it spit it out (literally) and give it a few seconds and the picture would appear, it was like magic really. Then came the camera with film; let me be clear you could not view the picture to see if it was good or not, you just had to take it to get developed and see what the result was.
My oh my, things have REALLY changed. So I wasn't feeling that 30 was old, but after doing this post, I kinda feel differently. I guess I will just take my old self, and enjoy my 30's.
Berke let me sleep in until 8 a.m. I visited my old friend, the gym in the a.m.
Here are the cute boys, Berke and Q; they do so well playing together twice a week.
