BACK IN THE DAY

Anyone in their 30's, get ready for a trip down memory lane.  Anyone under 25, click open a new tab and go to wikipedia, you might need it.

I asked a few people the following question.  What are some things an 18 years getting out of High School right now would no nothing about from when we were 18 and getting out of High School?  The answers were more fun than i thought.

My favorite answer by far was the Dewey Decimal System, what a geek i know, but i remember we had to take a class just to learn how to use the damn thing just so we could find a book.  While we're on the subject of books, remember the Encyclopedia?  Yeah, before the internet, and expensive as fuck.  A set of those was like $800 dollars back in the day, you can buy two computers for that now a days.

Speaking of computers, remember the floppy disk?  Yup, i think it had the equivalent of like 3 or 4 MB, yet somehow enough back then, weird how now 8GB memory card is just for quick things.  Yet somehow it's always full when i need it.  Oh damn, remember dial-up for the internet?  What 18 year old now knows the tortures of dial-up? 

On the note of dialing, let's give it up to payphones and having to dig through your pockets for change to make a phone call.  Or returning a page.  Who had a pager back in the day? This guy right here, more than one actually.  I look at my cell phone as I write that and see my voicemail is full.  Reminds me that there used to be a machine that used to take the messages in your house, yeah the big ass answering machine, not even digital, it was tape.  What about actually knowing people's phone numbers? Huh, remember when you didn't take a shit if your cell phone died?

Now we're getting to the serious stuff.  I remember when boomboxes came with tape decks, remember recording from tape to tape and making mixtapes.  Yes kids, that's where the word came from.  Fuck, i'm old.  How many of us had walkmans confiscated in school? Even the discman made it's appearance during the end of High School right? Remember going to the store to buy CD's?  Or taking two buses across town to the right store to find the CD you wanted.

Before megastores came out where you could buy your music and movies.  Which brings us to VHS, yeah, told you it was getting good.  The funny thing is that there are still a few movies that haven't been released in DVD format yet.  TV's used to be big ass boxes, heavy too and always a little fuzzy.  Well, we really weren't aware of it at the time.  Remember going to the movies and waiting like a year for the movie to come out for rent.

Let's end it with the word processor/typewriter, with how social networking was with actual people and the name Urkel was something we could all talk about.  I'm not saying these 18 year olds have it better, but you know how you don't know how bad you have it until you see how the other half lives.  Yeah, kinda like that.


Later folks, thanks for coming along for the ride.