<p>Me: Go to library. Using card catelogue. Looking up journals and using the stacks. Hoping no one stole your book or that it wasn’t checked out already. Going to other libraries to find additional info. Taking notes on 3 x 5 cards or paying 10 cents to copy a page out of a book. Hoping to find enough information on my topic. Type over and over as I always forgot a paragraph or sentence. Carbon paper for two copies.</p>
<p>Them: Lay on bed. Listen to ipod. Google. Cut and paste. Reword. Determine and write intro and conclusion. E-mail to teacher minutes before deadline.Get up off the bed :)</p>
<p>I paid extra to get an AM only radio in my first, non airconditioned, new car. </p>
<p>Hated dialing a neighbor- they had several 9’s and 0’s in their phone number. </p>
<p>Wearing white gloves (not required) and hats (they devolved to doily like things) when they were required in Catholic churches. The white gloves came in handy later for HS marching band. The significance of wearing patent leather shoes…</p>
<p>Gawd, you’re all reminding me of those horrible e-mails I get from a cousin of mine. I especially hate the ones about how we weren’t such wosses that we needed seatbelts, and we all survived!! </p>
<p>Well, yeah, 'cause the ones who didn’t survive aren’t here anymore . . . </p>
<p>But I also remember the phone system my freshman year in college: Two phones per floor. Eight phones in the whole dorm, of ~300 girls. If you had a call, the buzzer in your room would buzz, and then you’d have to race to find a vacant phone, before the caller hung up. It was one buzz for one roommate and two buzzes for the other roommate. If you came back from being out and the white was showing in the visual part of the buzzer, you wouldn’t know whether it was a missed call for you, or for your roommate.</p>
<p>It was the most horrible system I could ever imagine.</p>
<p>Now, my children have cell phones, so they can ignore my calls whenever they like.</p>
<p>Uh oh. I turned 28 on Monday and am finding that I identify more with the parents than the 18-year-olds.</p>
<p>I had chickenpox like every other kid, my library card was a big deal to me and I Dewey-Decimal’d my entire at-home library, and the Power Rangers were way after my time. We had the Britannica Macropedia and Micropedia and everyone thought our encyclopedia was the coolest one they’d ever seen. I was a child of the Smurfs and She-Ra, and there was no “e-mail” or “internet”. Facebook was all the rage after I’d already graduated from college…</p>
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<p>Oh no!! I’ve got one in my desk drawer right now!</p>
<p>^ Lucky you! I can’t fine mine anywhere. It was a circular slide rule, with a yellow smiley face on the back. Used it plus a 4-function calculator my 1st 1.5 years, all the while feeling sorry for those that came before me that had to do all those additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions by hand…</p>
<p>When did mechanical pencils become more available? For some reason, I had a normal pencil in high school/college and sharpened, sharpened, etc.</p>
<p>Re cars with no radio…that’s what my D had to drive in undergrad. No radio or CD player and cost too much to replace radio/put in CD player. She wasn’t too happy about that, but it was transportation.</p>
<p>I tried to explain to her what a big deal it was to see something on TV just for children. We loved “Lost in Space” and “The Flintstones” and “Lassie.” My youngest sister used to cry every week because she thought Lassie was going to die.</p>
<p>We loved “The Wizard of Oz” every year, and it was such an event. I think of that often. When my mom (now age 80) saw it in the theater in 1939 at age 10, she was so scared of the witch that her mother had to take her home before it was finished. Then my sisters and I watched in (all in black and white since we didn’t have color back then). Then my D had the DVD and could watch it whenever she wanted.</p>
<p>How about the text based computer game Adventure? (“You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”)
When I was at MIT in the early '80s the sys ops tried to ban it because it used up too much of the resources of the VAX 780s.</p>
<p>Last weekend D and I watched about 10 episodes of Twilight Zone – I forgot what a great show that was, how it messed with your mind. No CG, no actual horror, hardly any special effects (cute stop-motion dinosaur in one ep.), and all filmed in gorgeous black-and-white.</p>
<p>My favorite episodes so far:
The Obsolete Man
Five Characters in Search of an Exit
The Hitchhiker (!!!)</p>
<p>I forgot what an amazing talent Rod Serling was (bit of a crush here :)), and in many of the episodes he narrates, he’s holding the weapon of his destruction – a cigarette. They all smoked in those days on TV, and it’s such a shame we lost them so young.</p>
That’s nothing! I have very curly hair, and back in my day (before the '80s!), the only permissible style was stick straight. (That’s the reason for
except for me, they had to be coffee cans!)</p>
<p>So I would get my hair straightened - kind of the opposite of a perm. Now think about that when it grows out! Crinkly on top and then stick straight to the bottom!</p>
<p>“So I would get my hair straightened - kind of the opposite of a perm. Now think about that when it grows out! Crinkly on top and then stick straight to the bottom!”</p>
<p>Tell me about it! I remember when I found out “perm” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.</p>
<p>I’ve got two more; hot combs and jherri curls! Big afros have made a bit of a come back.</p>
