What My Daughter May Never Know…

With the new year, many people are reflecting on things of the past. It is interesting to see what is no longer around. It is also fun to see the things that came into existence and have become obsolete in my lifetime.  No, I am not old, just born before the 80’s. As I have reflected on these things I wonder how many of these things my 20 month old may never know about. In fact, some of these things my 11-year-old thinks are only myths.

** I will  not discuss fashion items that are obsolete at the moment, because next week they may reappear. **

1.) Home phones – With wireless technology, more and more families are tossing their home phone service out the window.

2.) Phones with cords – If you still have a phone, I bet it is cordless. I don’t think corded phones have been in much use since the late 90’s. I believe we left that ship behind by ’98. For some reason, I just couldn’t let go sooner.

3.) VHS Tapes – I know when my son was little we had Barney, The Wiggles, Teletubbies, etc… on VHS, but then again we still had a VCR. Now, I barely hang on to DVDs because I can stream most movies we want to watch.

4.) Newspapers – With electronic media, newspapers are really floundering. A lot of individuals now read their magazines and newspapers on their computers, Ipads, phones, Kindles, etc… I recently acquired a Kindle, and would love to have all of my magazine subscriptions digital. The only thing that I wouldn’t mind keeping in traditional form are my cookbooks, which coincidentally take up an entire bookshelf.

5.) Postal Mail – Only a handful of people still write letters. I think my 11-year-old has only written a handful of letters. However, he is proficient with email, and can easily send cards, letter, etc… over the internet. And, with the age of the internet, you don’t even have to mail payments out, now you can schedule them electronically. Maybe that is the reason stamps keep going up?

6.) A life without Starbucks and cell phones – This might date me, but I remember not having a cell phone. However, now I can’t even leave my house without mine, and my heart starts to race if I misplace it. I think it amusing that my 20 month old walks around with a play cellphone attached to her ear. It also makes me aware that maybe I walk around with my cell phone attached to my ear way too much.

And as for Starbucks … my son thought that was my beverage of choice for the first five years of his life. He has never known life without Starbucks, and I am pretty sure my daughter won’t either. As a kid we had drive-thru restaurants, but not drive thru coffee shops.

7.) Drinking Tap Water – I think it has been about 10 years or more since I have drank water out of my tap. I must have it filtered. Back when I was my kids age filtering wasn’t a word, but then neither was the internet, CDs, terabytes, gigabytes, etc…

8.) Encyclopedias – When is the last time you picked up one of those enormous books? I don’t think I have touched one in years, and when my son has to do a report, we quickly turn to the internet. I’m not sure he would really know how to use an encyclopedia and if it is even necessary for him to learn how.

8.) Road Maps – The last time I saw a road map was actually just last month, and a cousin that lives in rural Oklahoma gave us one, so we could find another place in rural Oklahoma. They were afraid our GPS would not get us where we needed to go. So, I say that road maps are on their way out, unless you live in rural America. Since I am a suburban mom with GPS I seriously doubt my daughter will know what a road map is.

9.) Gasoline under $3.00 per gallon – As of today the gas prices in Texas are still under $3.00, but that is quickly on the rise, and as much as I hate to admit it I don’t think we will see it under $3.00 ever again.

10.) Life without the Internet – I have not had the internet all of my life, but it sure feels like it. I do not know what I would do without my internet today. I do know I wouldn’t be writing a blog. Nowadays we use the internet for research, to find addresses, to find jobs, to attend school, to watch movies, to make phone calls, to read books, to pay bills, etc…

11.) Camera’s with Film – I think most everyone I know has a digital camera, but I bet they don’t all have a 35mm cameras. I think I might have one hidden somewhere in my house, but I don’t know where that is. Maybe as I continue with Project Declutter 365, I will find it. I think using a camera that takes film is an art, and a lot more difficult than digital. I know that my pictures I captured on film were not half as good as my digital pictures.

12.) Televisions without remotes – I remember a time when you if wanted to change the t.v. channel you actually had to get up and change it. Now, we are completely lost if we lose the remote. In fact, with the way t.v.s are made today we don’t even have the manual channel changing option. I don’t know about you, but my family has a good 3 remotes necessary when operating our t.v. (yes, we do know that we could get one intelligent remote, but what fun would that be?)

13.) Walkman –With the emergence of mp3 players and smart phones, Walkman have gone by the wayside. The first Walkman made was simply a radio, then they came out with the radio/cassette combo., and then they graduated to the CD Walkman, now we ask – What is a Walkman?

14.) Wires – With everything going wireless, we won’t see as many wires coming out of our electronics. We have wireless phones, wireless computers, wireless printers, wireless headsets, etc…

15.)  Life without a Phoenix Seamless Drum Enclosure – This one was a throw out by my husband and you are probably thinking “What In The World!!!” Well, our little girl will never know what life is without one of these – it is her Daddy’s creation. A complete enclosure for drums. You will usually find these in churches with live praise and worship.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading this list as much as my family and I had coming up with it. Somethings were really a no brainer, but others took some brainstorming. We honestly could have come up with a lot more, but I really needed to get this posted. Below are a few more we thought of.

Yellow Pages and White Pages
Pagers
Rabbit Ears (antenna)
Typewriters
Dot Matrix printer
Michael Jackson (he will always be the King of Pop)
Black and White TV, or Black and White Movies
Space Shuttle Missions

I would really love your input on this list, what things do you think might be on their way out or already are? Just post to my comments.