Retro

My kids were visiting my dad and his wife in Medicine Hat last week. Their spare room (and the tiny attached room that was once used as a kitchen) is a total throwback to another time. He has an old bread box, a camera, toaster, box of laundry soap, and dishes all from around the 1950s to make it a cool, retro space. He also has a rotary-dial telephone, which the kids used to call home.

They had no idea what it was or how to use it. It occurred to me how many thing from my past will be totally lost to them.

They will have to offer a nickel for your thoughts because they will have completely forgotten what a "penny" was.

The idea of having to reheat leftovers in the oven is absurd.

They will never have a super-long phone cord that gets all tangled up, so once a week you have to hang the receiver upside down to let it spin wildly until it is untangled again.

Forget LPs and cassette tapes, they will barely remember CDs by the time they are teenagers.

On road trips we looked out the window, made up car games, talked, read, played games, or solved riddles in the invisible ink workbooks my mom would buy for us for the trip. We didn't have a DVD player in the car or an iPad for video games to pass the time.

To research a school project we had to go to the library, search the stacks, and collect information. There was no wikipedia or google, with its instant and copious amounts of information, to find it for us.

We had to watch commercials and some of us even had to get up and manually turn the channel on the television. No PVR. No remote controls.

Our kids' lives are easier in many ways I suppose but not necessarily better. Everything is expected instantly. Instant gratification. Instant results. Instant access. I love my iPhone, of course, but there is something to be said for a simpler time. A time when you used your imagination and got out and played and explored rather than staring at a screen where a virtual version of you played and explored. And I shudder to think about all the things that my kids will be thinking nostalgically about when their children stare back at them blankly at the mention of an mp3 or a paperback book. Today's technology is amazing and I'm sure I'd be lost without it, but I wouldn't trade my rotary-dial phone or my slower-paced childhood for anything.