Remember When

 

Do you remember when you could go outside without the fear of dying from a virus? How about the time when you could go to the grocery store and see the toilet paper aisle filled with rolls of the soft white gold, we usually take for granted? I recently began enjoying the service of having another person shop for my beloved goods and they magically appear on my doorstep the next day or within a couple hours if I really had to have them that soon.

From this point on the following words are going to be more for those who have lived for a few decades. For the Millennials it will be somewhat of a history lesson. So, hopefully we can all learn something from this silly passage. I guess you will not know that until the end of the page.

Let us start with that term ‘Millennial’. I remember a time when that did not exist. We had Baby Boomers and Generation X, which is where I fall under, and then there was Generation Y. Until they got upset and changed it to ‘Millennials’. I guess they did not want to be considered uncreative and project their originality. Which did not last long because now we have Generation Z. We are so predictable as a society it makes me giggle.

Where do we go from here? Oh yeah, the next new group is Generation Alpha. A term I just learned while doing some research on Google for this moment. I will get to the Google topic in a minute. Dog-ear that for me. Back to the Alpha, are we starting over? Are we going back to the beginning? Why did they not call it ‘Generation A’ like the others? Would not the very first group of people in existence, when they started counting, be the ‘Alpha’s’?

Actually, they are called the ‘Lost Generation’. They are the group of folks born 1883 to 1900. That was a long time ago. They are our ancestors, and we call them ‘Lost’. It was a time where we began, and it was much simpler. We have come so far as a people but sometimes forget that it is where it all started. That is where our creative and inventive nature was birthed and grew from.

I remember when you had to get up off the couch to change the channel on your television. Also, at that time you had only three or four channels to click through on the rotary dial. Speaking of rotary dials, telephones used to have those also and hung on the wall in the kitchen or had a long cord in the living room. You were considered cool or rich if your parents allowed you to have a phone in your room.

I remember when food was not Organic, plant based or containing Gluten and milk did not have Lactose. We drank water from a hose while we were playing outside. Playing outside was our social medium. Nobody shared pictures of what they were eating for lunch or when they went somewhere with their friends. The only way you knew who was doing what was through gossip. The only time you knew what was happening in the world was written in a newspaper or on the news. Yes, there used to be a daily roll of paper with black letters printed on it.

When I was twelve years old, I used to ride my bike around the neighborhood delivering those newspapers. I would get a stack of them every day and sit on my living room floor rolling them up and sliding rubber bands on them. My hands would be covered in black ink. I made about one hundred dollars a month and did it without wearing a helmet. Nobody ran me over or tried to molest me. I know it is weird.

I remember when Google and Amazon were not something we used every day. If you wanted to learn about a certain topic, you asked someone older or you read a book with facts in it. Back in the day, it was a big deal to order something by mail. You browsed through this thick book of colorful pages of products, it was called a catalog. Then you either called to order or you filled out a sheet of paper found on the exact middle page, by hand with a pen.  Afterwards, you tore it out, folded it up and slid it into an envelope with a stamp you had to lick in order to stick it on the upper right corner. Once it was mailed off you had to wait several weeks before seeing said package. Next day shipments were about the same price as a week’s worth of groceries.

Groceries were those food related items you went to a store to purchase. I remember driving my mom crazy with my attempts of tossing in boxes of my favorite cereal. She would always remove it an replace it with Cheerios, Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies. Those fun sugar cereals were too expensive for our tight budget. Plus, they always had a cool prize in the box that we would cry for. The only time we would get the fun cereals was if they were on sale or it was a special time like our birthday.

Birthdays were fun when I was growing up. My mom would bake a cake and cover it with thick and goopy chocolate frosting. Store bought cake could not touch the masterpiece made by Mom. She would top the cake with the number of lit candles to match the number of years since she gave birth to you. Then you would blow out the wax sticks of open flame after making a wish. Think about that. Not only did they place a pile of fire in front of a child, but they also had him or her spit all over the cake before serving it to everyone.

I remember when in order to watch your favorite television show, you had to plan on watching it when it came on it’s scheduled time. Eventually when the VCR was cheap enough to buy, you could insert a Video Cassette to Record and watch your show later. You could even set a timer to record it if you were not home. That was all good until someone in your family accidentally records something else over your show and all is lost. There was no such thing as binge watching until you waited another year for the DVD set to drop.