I wonder how many of my fellow senior citizens feel they are “left behind” when listening to younger generations discussing routine activities.
Every now and then I take a minute to reflect on how far behind I actually am. It’s so depressing. I’m not alone. All of you reading this, who don’t have a young person embedded in your household, I’ll tell you, you’ve got a lot to catch up on.
Embedded is a good example. We hear that word a lot nowadays, and I think it was first coined to describe the status of reporters covering the war in Iraq. I always thought embedded was something a splinter did, or an anxious paramour.
Plasma TV is another invention which I don’t understand. I know what plasma is, but how does it get paired up with television?
In the last few days, I’ve frequently heard the term “text messaging” and am reading a book in which this act is referred to over and over again. I’m still not sure what it means, but I think it has something to do with cell phones or computers and is the modern version of note writing. Remember when passing notes in class resulted in detention or worse? Today, with cell phones the size of a wrist watch, passing notes is probably unnecessary – one can just hold up their hand.
“Text messaging” – what exactly is that? Sending text as a message – is it uncool to say “sending a note?” The word “typing” has been passA?© for a number of years and is called “keyboarding.” Most of the people I know who have computers and hence use keyboards never took a typing class. These are the ones who are apt to get carpal tunnel syndrome, because there is a correct way to hold your hands/wrist when “keyboarding,” but no instructions come with a computer. You hear about ergonomically correct but that usually has to do with furniture.
Snowboarding is touted as being a new sport and reminds me of the homemade things we used to produce when there were no sleds or we were short a sled for five or six kids. My favorite was the round metal lid from the washing machine (yes, folks, a real wringer washer). Take that machine cover and put a little paraffin wax on it and it would fly! Of course, seats were warmed in another way when we dragged ourselves and the dented lid back to the house. My mother was not one of today’s modern moms who would praise us for our creativity and initiative. She wanted the washing machine lid where it belonged. We also used up a lot of cardboard out on the hills in our sliding excursions. This was our way of recycling boxes. Old car fenders from the household dump (don’t shudder, everyone had one) also were pretty good for sliding, but had to be tinkered with first.
Many newcomers or transplants to our area think that because my generation was born and raised in Maine, we must all have grown up on the ski slopes, ice skating or were born with snowshoes attached, but, for many of us, all these activities were for the “well to do.” A quick math check should indicate that outfitting five or six kids in skis and/or ice skates would wreck a budget.
Snowboarding would have been right up our alley, except the term hadn’t been invented yet.
We also didn’t have our own private phone, but if we had a phone in the house it was likely to be on a party line. That meant a group of people, usually in the same neighborhood, all were connected. If you picked up the phone to dial a number (this was before push-buttons on phones), you had to listen first to see if anyone was “using the line” and if they were, the proper thing to do was hang up gently. Or, if you were really quiet, you could listen to their conversation. Kind of like reading the text-message of another person or hacking into their e-mail.
We didn’t have e-mail, either, but I bet a lot of readers remember air mail. Back in the day when there were trains and trucks on the road, mail was routinely sent this way – but if you paid a little extra in postage, it could go by air. There was special paper for writing air mail letters. It was very lightweight, and people would write on both sides of the paper, making reading one of these missives a real challenge. Air mail was used frequently in war-time, and today most mail is sent by air and there’s no special category. Instead, we have e-mail.
We “oldsters” have to work hard to keep up with the terminology and technology of today. Sometimes it’s worth it. E-mail and computers have made corresponding with friends and relatives much less expensive. Maybe what we save on postage and phone bills can be used toward the purchase of a snowboard. Or fuel oil or gasoline. It’s a tough call.
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