Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Kids These Days...

The other day I came across my old camera.

Unfortunately, I came across it during a fit of early spring cleaning, during which I was getting rid of anything I hadn't used in the past six months.  The only exception to the rule was things that I hadn't used in the last six months but knew for a fact I would be using again soon (summer clothes, for example, fall into this category.  Maternity clothes do not.  FYI.)

I haven't used this camera in probably the last 8 years.



And it seems highly unlikely that I'll be using it again anytime soon.

I got this camera for Christmas during my freshman year of college.  It came with me to London for Study Abroad in 1998.  Together we went through 12 rolls of film in three months.  It has held, quite literally, a lot of memories.

I waved it excitedly at everyone in the room.  "Look!  It's the camera I took to London!"

Chris said, "Throw it away." the big meanie

And Lexi said, "Cool!  Does it have any pictures on it?"

I guess a roll of film is a hard concept to grasp for a person who spends all her time with a camera taking pictures like these:


******
What are some other things kids these days will never understand?

15 comments:

  1. Pay phones. Film strips. Crystal Pepsi. Chastity Bono.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Macarena. ...Of course, no one really understood it. Dumbed-down country line-dancing in Spanish.

    ReplyDelete
  3. They'll never understand London unless they go there with some awesome friends for study abroad when they are older.

    ReplyDelete
  4. While I was still teaching, a student came in and asked if they could use the land-line phone at my desk. When using this phone, you had to dial 9 twice, then the number. You couldn't dial the 9s too quickly, otherwise it wouldn't get you out of the school districts phone system. So when my student complained it didn't work, I asked her to do it again, just slower. I watched her that time, knew she had done it slow enough and was surprised to hear the student mention that it was still making a funny sound. I picked up the phone and that "funny sound" (which meant the phone wasn't working) was a busy signal! That student had never heard a busy signal! It them made me stop and think. When was the last time I had heard a busy signal? I couldn't remember. In a world of voice mail, busy signals are very rare!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh yeah, they will never understand having to wait for a VHS tape to rewind before they can start a movie. Clara gets pretty frustrated when she wants to watch one of the few VHS movies we have left and I have to rewind it. She thinks I'm ignoring her request and yells at me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The concept of arranging to meet someone at a given time and place and having to do so because you have no means to communicate wih them that you are running late/no longer interested/ have found something more interesting.
    Wait- actually arranging to meet more than about an hour in advance has disappeared too.
    Oregon Trail in computer class.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Life pre-internet. I can barely imagine it myself.

    I love Oregon Trail in computer class as well.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks for the comment. But how do I make my blog say that it's been recently updated. I have a lot of people tell me this. Can this be remedied? Is it cause my blog is private? Maybe you don't have the answers, but a girl can hope.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It is because it's private Linds. My kids don't understand why we can't always fast forward the commercials.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The Oregon Trail!!

    We were evil and would name our pioneers names like "Your Grandma" and then it would say "Your Grandma has broken her arm". Then we would push them all to go fast on bare bones rations and they had to try to drive their wagon across every river.

    It was awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I think Oregon Trail is a Facebook game now. Heaven help us all!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Rotary telephones. We had one growing up, and even then some people didn't get it. We lived close to the highway, and sometimes when peoples' cars would break down they'd ask to use our phone. I remember one person who tried to dial by pushing her finger in the hole for each number. :)

    Also, the walkman/cassette tapes and even the cd walkman. I remember jogging with my cd walkman and it would skip a lot when the batteries were low. How I love my iPod!

    ReplyDelete
  13. You guys are awesome! These are all great! My kids know about VHS tapes, but rotary phones would blow their minds! I've also had blank looks while trying to describe a typewriter.

    And Mela, I'm pretty sure no one ever understood Chastity Bono. Possibly not even Chastity Bono.

    But, you guys, what is Oregon Trail? You know, besides the whole Lewis and Clark thing.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Your school didn't have oregon trail? It was this "educational " game, available only on apples - hence school computer class, where you led your family across the US from St Louis to oregon. There were options about whether you were wealthy or not (more money to buy supplies) and you balanced the number of rations your family got. And a really basic shooting game to get more meat. The facebook game is nowhere near as awesome. People died of dysentery a lot.
    I also miss Kings Quest, but that was available on IBM computers and marks me out as having a geeky family history.
    ON the subject of not understanding the past, I remember reading the notes from someone who did JYA in Geneva in the early 1980s/late 1970's (my jya was in Geneva) talking about taking the boat across and how terrible it was to not be able to go home that year. Everyone in my year flew over, and about half of us went home at some point that year.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yeah, but see now Chastity Bono is Chaz Bono on account of the sex change. Therefore, Chastity Bono is obsolete.

    ReplyDelete

Will blog for comments

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...