I was thinking recently about all of the things that I experienced as a teenager that no teenager today will ever experience. I started to keep a mental list. (Not a mentalist, though. It is probably illegal to keep one of those on the premises solely on the basis of helping me to remember where my mind was yesterday.) Here is what I have come up with so far.
• Watch television on a black and white set
• Change a channel without using a remote
• Change a channel using a pair of pliers because the knob had fallen off of the TV set and you were forced to improvise
• Listen to the audio of the Playboy network while hoping that the scrambled signal may momentarily give you a glimpse of what might potentially be a body part.
• Be able to record only one thing at a time
• Having to run out to Walgreens to buy a VHS tape
• Keeping a VHS tape ready at all times while watching MTV in an attempt to record your favorite videos
• Enjoy an hour flipping through the racks at a record store
• Hanging out at a record store at midnight on a Monday night in order to be one of the first people to buy a new release
• Making an actual mix tape
• Recording a song off the radio or TV by holding a cassette player up to the speaker and hitting record
• Write a letter and send it in the mail
• Be able to fully spell the word “you” in a sentence
• Diagnose computer problems by listening to modem noise
• Create a DOS boot disk
• Spend time on an internet newsgroup (though I believe that Usenet still exists in one form or another)
• Sit in the front seat of a car before being called a tween
• Walk to the store by yourself
• Walking through the aisles of a video store looking for something to catch your eye
• Experiencing the indescribable emotions associated with entering the “back room” of a video store
• Dial a rotary phone
• Use a pay phone
• Experience a time where it was not possible to be in constant contact with everyone you know
• Not having your life automatically documented and spread with the entire planet for all eternity whether you wish for it to happen or not. (High school must be horrible now. I mean, I see high school cliques on Facebook and I am twenty years removed from high school.)
• Watch Australian Rules Football on ESPN because that is the only sport available to watch across any media
• Spend a lazy morning watching five hours of game shows. I don’t even think you could do this now if you watched the Game Show Network.
• Grab a newspaper in the morning to read Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Bloom County, Peanuts and a host of other incredible comic strips. That is an entire literary format that has essentially disappeared in my lifetime
• Attend a concert without trying to simultaneously record it or dealing with a dozen people around you who have decided to watch a concert through their phone
That is my starting list. I’ll keep on adding to this as the weeks go on.
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