You should have seen my kids’ faces when I told them that you could have a question about something and not be able to get the answer to that question without leaving the house.
i hate to have one of these at all but my big "WE DRANK FROM THE HOSE" opinion is that people younger than millennials really can't imagine what coming of age in a time of media scarcity meant - like, I would read about records and movies and not actually be able to see them for YEARS
Last year I was explaining to Saoirse that the reason my mother wasn't good with devices was because people didn't have computers or tablets when she was young because they hadn't been invented yet, and she looked at me with complete disbelief and asked, "not even CHROMEBOOKS?"
Me to my 6-year old:
Me: "TV... TV was like YouTube, except that it was stuck on 'Play Next', loaded with ads, and someone else got to choose what show you start on. If you miss an episode, it was gone forever."
Eldest: "Whoa!
(*looks around*)
"When you were young, did they have *chairs*?"
in college, we had a friend from Japan whose English wasn't so great. He was a brilliant blues and rock guitarist though, and was studying classical guitar.
He wanted us to hear a song but couldn't remember much of it. It drove us all nuts because we wanted to crack the code. ..
Finally, we called a MUSIC STORE and hummed a few bars to a guitar sales guy we sort of knew. It worked!
The song, btw, was Sunny, by Bobby Hebb. He wanted to use the chord progression to practice improvising.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubvY...
We had a Readers Digest book called How to Do Just About Anything and I read and reread it. It included everything from mending a puncture in a bike tyre to delivering a baby.
My kid saw a big raptor type bird and wanted to know what it was. But wanted to not use the internet. We have a lot of books but none on like giant birds. She demanded to know how I did this as a kid and I'm like fr my parents would say some bullshit as I'd believe until humiliated later. Or library
I used to work at a university. I was telling a story to younger coworkers about my car breaking down in the hills above Hollywood and having to hike 3+ miles to find a pay phone. They were all gobsmacked when I explained that no one had a cell phone at the time of the story.
I worked at a daily newspaper in the old days - people would call to ask us for info. Especially on the night shift, folks in bars would phone up to settle a bet, there was money riding on the opinion of the person who answered the phone…
Once a friend and I who were really into horse racing wanted to know who won the Japan Cup, and the only way we could think of to find out was to call the Japan Racing Association offices.
I got DSL before almost anyone else in the UK because of my job and before that I could get online at home without paying for more than the phone calls because of my job: when looking something up online became instant rather than even the minute or two of delay as you dialed up was transformative
