<p>My kids are coming to visit today. So I pulled up the email with their flight information, and went to the airline site to see if the flight is on time. Yes, there are more advanced methods like having flight updates sent to my phone, but I was being old fashioned for today. So the second I clicked on the airline site, the information for the flight I was looking for appeared under the search choices. I was so impressed.</p>
<p>Back in the olden days, when my husband used to fly a lot for business, the way I figured out whether the flight was on time was the call the airline and ask. And when we flew, we used to have paper tickets and got them through a travel agent. My husband used to have a handy pamphlet that had all the scheduled flights in it so he could call the agent and tell him what flight he wanted.</p>
<p>There are so many ways our kids cannot even imagine how hard things were.</p>
<p>When we got our first mortgage in 1988 (not in the stone age) the credit union we got it from would mail us a card with a ledger on it. We would write a check and mail it back. They would record the payment and mail it again. I showed it to my kids and they wouldn’t believe it. That, and the amount of the payment. Oh, and the interest rate.</p>
<p>With friends this weekend, we were watching a movie and one of them said “I wonder…” and the other pulled out her phone and said “We don’t need to wonder any more, we can just look it up” Do you guys remember having to go to the library for research?</p>
<p>I had to explain to my kids the concept of a slide carousel when they thought the circular slide carousel was the same thing as a circular movie film reel.</p>
<p>Remember filmstrips? And it was a big deal to be the kid that got to turn the knob on it. There was an AV club at school. Kids who were trained to set up and fix the dinosaur slide machines and filmstrip projectors. It was a prestigious job because you got to leave class sometimes to go help out.</p>
<p>Remember back when, if you were going to meet someone someplace and they were running late, or you were? You had no way to contact them unless you could find a pay phone and had a dime.</p>
<p>I don’t look at it as things were “hard” years ago, but that things can be easier today.</p>
<p>My D had a flight this week for business. She emailed me her itinerary to my gmail account. I wanted to check her status so I put “Delta” in my google search on my iPad - automatically her flight info popped up on my page - google apparently recognized my gmail email about a flight and automatically pulled her entire Itinerary up. Pretty cool. </p>
<p>And because we’re all so technology dependent, we get pretty antsy when we’re not connected. When we were in Europe a few months ago, there were several instances when we didn’t have cell service and I was separated from either my husband/son. I was much more frustrated and worried than I would have been twenty years ago when there were no cell phones. </p>
<p>I remember electric typewriters, carbon paper and telex machines. If we had a research paper and the set of encyclopedias we had would not suffice, yes, we spent Saturday afternoon in the local library; sifting through card catalogues and then searching for the books. ATM"S were unheard of and I remember standing in line at the bank with my mom to cash checks and score that lollipop. We even had a milkman back then!</p>
<p>Remember when airline flights were on time? and the seats were big enough to sit in? And you could go get on your plane without having to be there two hours beforehand? When we played outside all day and nobody cared until dinner time? And you didn’t worry if you didn’t hear from someone every 10 minutes?</p>
<p>But thank goodness the old library card catalog is gone–I spent way too many hours researching and just trying to find books. Now I could have been done in about a quarter or less of the time.</p>
<p>^^^Exactly. While technology is great and in certain ways makes life easier, the pace of everything is just going up and up and up. The stress levels are going up. There is so much information coming at such speed. Every second of every day has to be utilized, even for younger kids, never mind for adults.</p>
<p>A friend in England sent me a Facebook message with her address, because I was making plans to visit her this summer. Say it was, “154 Main Street, Oxford…” So I got out of Facebook, went to Google maps, and after I typed “1,” MY FRIEND’S ADDRESS popped up in the box!! That kind of freaked me out.</p>
<p>Well, some things WERE plain hard. My mom was a typist when I was growing up. Starting in the third grade, I would proofread what she typed. When I found errors, she would have to white out the typo, put the paper in the typewriter, align the type PERFECTLY, and type the correct letter(s) in just the right place. And when law students would make changes (as they always did), she would have to re-type more than one page. Multi-lith mats were the worst. Oh, well, at least I had a steady job for years!</p>
<p>A recent American Airlines flight we were on departed late and meant our connecting flight would leave before we arrived. I discovered not only that I could go online to aa.com without signing up for internet on the plane but checking my itinerary I discovered that American had booked us on the next available flight to our destination. This was unheard of even in the most recent of olden days.</p>
<p>One recent night, I needed to drop my daughter off at someone’s house in an unfamiliar area. I had looked the address up, but somehow got lost. I whipped out my iPhone, said, “Drive to 123 Elm Street,” and just like that, the phone told me where to go. I love that!</p>
<p>These have been fun to read. My almost 21 year old asked me how old I was when I got my first cell phone (I’m 54). i said 37 and he stared at me in disbelief for a minute and then proceeded to belly laugh. He could not believe it…I think it was 1996 when I got my first one. I remember thinking I absolutely didn’t want it, but DH wanted me to have one. No email at work, no voicemail either. Dot-Matrix printer. I think technology is great, but the one that I think the cons outweigh the pros is texting. The kids have become incredibly addicted, and it is causing too many car accidents. </p>
<p>Remember mimeographs? The freshly printed sheets (why blue?) had that smell - I can’t describe it but I’d recognize it instantly if I came across one. They were often messy machines to use, though.</p>
<p>Some kids can’t read cursive anymore, and forget about doing any math mentally. Being attached to a cell phone means all of those things right in the hands, not even arm’s length. Looking people in the face is becoming a lost art as people are clicking on their cell phones even as they are speaking to you or being addressed. </p>
<p>If that cell phone goes out, it’s a real problem. No boarding pass, no phone numbers, no info for anything.</p>