abu & rabad

Recently I received a “email forward” which listed the various ways in which the world has changed since I was a kid. Stuff like

when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

Normally, I delete such ‘forwards’ without reading them, but for this one, it occurred to me that this could actually be good education for Abu and Rabad. The history of how some things evolved is so clear to us, that we somehow assume it would be clear to the kids too. But it often is not.

For example, just yesterday someone mentioned this story from some TED talk – basically a kid folded a piece of paper into half, drew a screen on one half and a keyboard on another half, and said that this was a laptop. The kid’s father pointed out that when he was a kid, these things did not exist. The kid, after pondering over this for a while, asked, “Paper did not exist when you were a kid?”

Right. So, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to give Abu/Rabad an idea of what did not exist when I was a kid. And I started reading the email to them. (I’ve reproduced the whole email at the end of this post for your reading pleasure.)

This went well. They were sufficiently interested and amazed by all the factoids. Then they started asking their own questions about the world back then:

“Did you have to wear uniforms to go to school?” wondered Abu.

“Yes,” I said, realizing that schools have changed very little in the last 30 years.

We had a long discussion about the aforementioned ‘card catalogue’ in the library, how books were arranged in the library. “Were the books all arranged alphabetically?” …

“You had cameras,” pointed out Abu, “I’ve seen photos from those days.”

“That’s correct, but our cameras did not immediately show you what the picture had come out like. We had to continue taking photos until 36 photos were done, and send it to a shop for getting the actual photos, and get the photos back 3 days later. And only then we would find out whether the photos came out alright, or out of focus or if there was any other problem.”

“Oh,” said Abu, clearly impressed by how hard the world was back then.

Then he asked this brilliant question:

“Was the world really black-and-white in those days?”

I should point out he is 8 years old.

I was nonplussed for a moment, before I burst out laughing.

“No, only our cameras were black-and-white,” I clarified. But really, when you think about it, if all the photos and all the movies from those days are black and white, would you really blame a kid for thinking that the world was black-and-white?

“Oh,” said Abu, “I thought everything was black-and-white.”

“Except the trees,” chimed in Rabad. “How can the trees have been black-and-white?”

And so it continued for a while. No DVDs. No MP3 players. Had to wait until Sunday morning for cartoons.

Rabad give me a look that brought out all shock and pity that her 6 years could muster, and said:

“The world was so unfair.”

You bet! Kids today have got it too easy…

As promised, here is the “When I was a kid” email

If you are 40 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning….Uphill….barefoot… BOTH ways Yadda, yadda, yadda And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of forty , I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn
Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen!

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3′ s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished and the tape would come undone.. Cause – that’s how we rolled, dig?

We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!

And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen…. forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd
*Send this to someone you’d like to make smile, Whether they are under 40 or not.)