My little guy says "How do you know the Crazy Frog football song?" Crazy Frog is this weird little animated frog . . . well, I think frog, except it looks mutant and has questionable exposed genitalia . . . who appears in various YouTube or other video sites singing many popular songs that have been put to some techno music, including the Queen classic.
I told him that "We Are The Champions" is an old song that existed before Crazy Frog. He looked at me like I was kidding. Then I told him that when I was a kid, YouTube didn't exist. He looked at me in disbelief. Then I told him that when I was a kid, we didn't have the internet. This time, he looked at me like I had two heads.
* * * * *
I don't feel old. And except for some gray hairs (which can be addressed with a good colorist), I don't think I look old (or at least not THAT old). But unlike me, my children will never live in a world where:
- 8 tracks were the "old" technology, being replaced by cassette recorders . . . and if you were really cool, you had a dual cassette recorder so you could make a "mix" cassette
- "Beta" was still an option, even though my family couldn't afford the $800 Beta or VHS machine (which could now be had for $30 brand new)
- Phones still had dials . . . touch tone was high tech
- You only carried a phone with you if you had just purchased a new one to plug into your wall outlet in your house
- You didn't have GPS - you either used an atlas, a fold-up AAA map, the county plat book . . . or you relied on your dad's instructions that went something like "go north at the corner, until you pass Eric Ament's house, turn west and cross the old bridge until you come to the old Parker place that Bubba G. bought and turn north onto the gravel road (make sure you slow down cause Bubba G.'s got a busted fence and his heifers get out) . . . "
- If your parents were rich, you might have had a Commodore 64 that cost nearly $600. Now in addition to an 80-gig laptop that costs about the same, our kids have iPods that cost 1/4 of that and have like . . . well, after rounding . . . 8,000,000 x the memory.
- WWW did not exist when we were kids . . . if you wanted to know something you had to look it up in an encyclopedia in the library. If you wanted to watch a video of people doing stupid things, you had to go to your aunt's house and watch a bad reel to reel of their family vacation. If you wanted to see porn, you had to find some kid who found and stole a 5 year old edition of Playboy from his dad's hidden stash.
- We didn't have Facebook, MySpace or any social networking (other than hanging out with your friends after school). If you wanted to form relationships with people you'd never met, you got yourself a pen pal and wrote letters.
Maybe I am old.
Or maybe I'm perfect and time's just on fast forward.
Respectfully submitted,
The Wife
5 comments:
I think you have added inflation to that C64 price. I guess that's why you make the big finance dollars. I remember the C64 being like 300 tops.. I had to buy my own because my parents sucked.
LOL
You think you've got problems? Hell, I was there for the transition from 78's.
Don't forget, that portable music first meant carrying a large stereo on your shoulder.
Boomboxes, whatever.
Walkman's were cassette players.
My parents bought the Betamax, it was obsolete 2 years later.
I had a TI994A computer that plugged into your TV and you had to write your own programs. That was what got me into computers. My 10th grade computer teacher ruined it for the rest of my life.
That woman could really suck the fun out of life.
Does it help when I tell you, you just made my day?
((((HUGS))))
Finding the playboys was half the fun!
Kids have it too easy, which actually is kind of scary.
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