O O Ø O O O O
When I was a Boy
It’s like the stereotypical grandpa: “When I was a boy, we didn’t have cars. We had to walk uphill, both ways, through 12-foot snowbanks.”
(Grandpa, what’s a foot?)
It’s funny, though—I can already hear myself talking like a Grandpa. I suspect it will sound a little like this:
When I was a boy, we had adverbs. Sentences just don’t sound right when they’re ended so sudden.
When I was a boy, we used to read things out of books. There were even huge stores full of them. Some days, we would spend the whole afternoon in there, drinking coffee and leafing through pages. Then one day they took all the chairs away, and told us to buy more, or get out of the store. We all left.
When I was a boy, we had to read paper maps to know where to go. Every time we went someplace new, your grandma and I would have a little argument about which way we should have turned. If we got lost, we would have to ask someone for directions. I lost three future grandmas that way.
When I was a boy, clocks were mechanical. They had little hands that moved from left to right. It took 12 hours for the hands to go all the way around. We even had little ones that you wore on your wrist. If you forgot to wind one up, it stopped, and you didn’t know what time it was anymore.
When I was a boy, we used to get paper mail delivered to our door every day. We used to get things called magazines, and fliers. Bills came on paper back then. Sometimes, we would even get paper letters written by friends!
When I was a boy, bands recorded music into collections called albums. They were big, colorful things that you kept on a shelf. When you wanted to listen to something, you actually had to take it off the shelf and put it into a machine called a player.
When I was a boy, they had just invented computers. We didn’t have an internet, so every computer was separate from every other computer. Some of them looked like big keyboards attached to a cabinet. Others were huge beige boxes that you would hide under the desk. They made lots of noise, and couldn’t hear or speak.
My grandkids are never going to believe me.
Kjell Wooding
March 25, 2008
OOØOOOODCCCLXVI
March 26th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
That is one scary thought. Like saying we used to run games off a cassette tape…You know the things you used to put in your walkman!!!
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
What is walkman, Is that type of servant?