The Good Old Days

One day many years ago, I was washing dishes when suddenly a picture popped into my head. I saw a much older me sitting in a rocking chair telling the grandchildren gathered at my feet a story about the “old days”. The impression came into my mind that my stories would be to them what “The Little House on the Prairie” books were to me-a true account of a life that seemed so very far away. At the time this occurred I was not so sure that things would be THAT different. Boy was I wrong!
Fast forward to Martin Luther King Day, 2011-my youngest two daughters have the day off from school. We were discussing who he was and why we celebrate him. They had the general idea but as our discussion grew I realized how foreign it all seemed to them. They had a hard time believing that a person’s skin color made that much difference!
My youngest daughter saw her first working record player when she was almost 4. She couldn’t wait to tell her siblings about “the giant CD that dropped down and went round and round and round. Music came out!”
She also had a rather philosophical view when her favorite movie disappeared. It was “Phantom of the Opera” and her brothers had hidden it. They swore they would go nuts if they had to hear it again. She was concerned for a day but decided it would be alright. She said she would wait until #2 came out.
She saw a phone that she loved at an antique shop but she couldn’t figure out how to use the rotary dial. I tried to explain how it worked.
We talked recently about the “intruder drills” that their school holds regularly. In my time, it was “nuclear bomb” drills. We were instructed to get under our desks and curl up in a ball when the siren went off. We were so ill informed we actually thought that would help!
My daughters are growing up with laptops, cell phones, special effects, 100 channels, laser printing and facebook. I grew up with computers that occupied whole buildings, carphones that only the rich and famous owned, no blood movie murders, 3 channels, crayons and letters to Grandma.
I grew up in a world that used words like nigger, spic, drago, retard, homo, commie, etc. My daughters don’t know any of these words. They know about worldy things that I didn’t know about until I was married with kids.
But I also grew up in a world where kids trick or treated by themselves. We could spend all day Saturday running around town by ourselves. We played at the park, went to the movies and had lunch at one of our many friends. Most moms stayed home and all of them looked after us. Summers were endless days of leisure and fun. We knew no fear.
So, I guess “the good old days” are all a matter of perspective. That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?