Technology

I remember my mom telling me when I was a kid just how lucky I was because she didn't have TV when she was little. I thought she was nuts because TV was around when I was born so I had no idea what she was talking about. Now I find myself thinking the same thing about my kids. There are so many things now that we didn't have in the 80s that my kids have no idea the difference in lifestyle.

Example #1: Ethan has been getting kind of upset with us because Bryan doesn't have a cell phone. There have been a couple of times where we have made plans to meet Bryan at the library, only to go to the wrong library. I assumed he was talking about one library and he assumed we were talking about another. This just upsets Ethan so badly because he can't believe we wouldn't pay the money to have a phone that goes everywhere with us. I tried to explain to him about pay phones but he just didn't get it. I think maybe we need to find an antiques shop to show him a pay phone! I remember the first cell phone my parents had when I was in high school. It was ENORMOUS! They called it a "brick phone" and it was a in a huge box and the phone was attached by a cord to the box. Yeah, that was cutting edge technology.

Example #2: Bryan's parents gave everyone a webcam for Christmas so we could all video-phone each other. It's taken us until this week to set ours up and now my kids are ADDICTED! Courtney always wants me to check and see "who is available so I can see them." I've tried to explain to my kids that we didn't have computers when I was young. I remember the first time they got them at Huntington Elementary and I was so terrified of them because they seemed so HUGE! When I was young, we looked forward to Huntington Heritage Days every year because that's when all my cousins from California would come back to visit and we could see them. Yesterday Courtney got to see Baby Carter on the webcam and sing him songs.

Example #3: Ethan and Courtney both have CD players in their rooms and they listen to Primary music each night as they fall asleep. In 9th grade we got our first CD player. It was a little portable one and it was expensive! I remember thinking that tapes were much cheaper and that CDs weren't going to last because they just looked weird. Now there are movies in DVDs and we can't live without them!

I could go on and on because there weren't digital cameras (heaven forbid you had to wait a week for photos to be developed only to find someone had their eyes closed!), iPods, portable DVD players (no wonder so many fathers in the 80s threatened to "turn this car back around" on family vacations), and I could go on and on. It's just a changing world and now I realize how much I sound like my mom!