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I felt old teaching my son to read today


Butter
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My 7 year old is using the Ordinary Parents Guide for learning to read.  Today he read a little story in there that included a person using a tape to record himself singing.  My son looked at me with the weirdest look.  He was so confused by the story.  That is when I realized that, to him, tape is something sticky that holds things together.  He has no concept of what the kind of tape in the story is.  I am old.

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Ha!  A few months ago, I had this discussion with DD#1:

 

DD: "Do people ever write down their wish lists?"
Me: "Yes.  That's what we did back in the olden days, before Amazon."
DD: "So, before Amazon, did you just use Netflix?"
Me: "Nope.  Netflix wasn't around when I was a little girl."
DD: "Did you use that thing like Grammy has on her TV?" (on demand)
Me: "Nope, didn't have that either."
DD (incredulously): "What did you DO?"
Me: "Well, we watched plain old TV.  Or we went to the video store."
DD: "What's a video store?"

And on and on it went.  Eventually I ended up explaining text adventure games to her.  She thinks "Zork" is a funny name. :)

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And on and on it went.  Eventually I ended up explaining text adventure games to her.  She thinks "Zork" is a funny name. :)

 

Just have her read a few choose your own adventure books... I always thought they were twaddle, but they are perfect for this sort of "historical" research ;)... and who knows she might end up liking rpg's.

 

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AND when we watched television there were two knobs for channels and one for volume, and you had to get up and walk over to the big box the television was in if you wanted to change the channel or the volume. 

 

AND there was no cable, only antennas, so some channels wouldn't come in very well and you'd have to move around the wire things to get the picture to show up.

 

AND there were only about 7 stations.

 

ETA: We were so lucky because we lived on top of a big hill and my father put the TV antenna on top of his 30ft ham radio tower.  We always had good reception.

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I had a similar feeling this week in my college Econ class.  The prof. was demonstrating creative destruction caused by new technology using music playing devices.  In a class full of college students, none of them knew what a phonograph, a reel to reel, or an 8 track were.  About 1/2 remembered what a cassette was.  I think the only reason they knew record players was due to the recent come back in popularity for enthusiasts.  

 

Oh...and my kids cannot imagine what life must have been like in the stone age when there was no internet.  You know...during my early marriage years! lol.

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Ha, I still have some old undeveloped rolls of film lying around in nooks and corners.  Someday my kids will discover them and be all "wow, look at this old antique treasure!"

 

My daughter just decided she is really impressed with toilets.  The mechanics of the flush.  She asked me who invented the first toilet.  I said, I have no idea.  But someone at the table whipped out her iphone and looked it up.  Of course she found the name, location, and year instantly.  Imagine, once upon a time, kids asked all sorts of questions for which they received no answers, ever.  They could have walked to the library and dug through the nonfiction section, but even then, the answer might not be there.  More likely, they would forget the question before they got near an encyclopedia/dictionary.  So many unsolved mysteries!

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This summer dd and I were driving to Costco. Dd was driving, and I was trying to turn off the ipod as we were nearing the store, and didn't want to start a new song. Of course, I don't know what to do with an ipod. My kids all have them, but I'm too cheap to buy one. One of them finally gave theirs to me, so I have one now, but of course I have no idea what I'm doing with it. Dd is driving and very calmly, very patiently, very articulately explains step by step, giving me time to respond, just what to do. I told her she's so sweet and kind and awfully patient with me. I laughed. She says, "You can always tell the quality of a person when you watch them explain technology to their parents."

 

Uh oh.

 

oldlady.gif

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And those ultra big CDs that you could turn over to play both sides (called records!)

 

He does know what records are!  His older sister has a record player and a nice collection of records, old (from her grandparents) and new.  Records are back in apparently.

 

I'm not sure if he'd know what a CD that plays music is, though.  He's know what it is for a Wii game, but our music is digital mp3's now.  Music gets played on phones or the Amazon Echo.

 

Wow, things have changed and fast!

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My son was fascinated with one of the only, if not the only, telephone booth in our area. Why would people need to go into a little box to make a call on a phone? He was flabbergasted when I told him these things used to be everywhere and that my mom always made sure we had quarters in case we needed to call home.

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Yesterday my almost five year old was talking to mil on my cell phone (we don't have a land line). I told him not to hit the red button (ITS NOT EVEN A REAL BUTTON!) because it would hang up on yaya. He said "what's hang up?"

...

Mil and I laughed at that after I explained that it would end the call.

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AND when we watched television there were two knobs for channels and one for volume, and you had to get up and walk over to the big box the television was in if you wanted to change the channel or the volume. 

 

AND there was no cable, only antennas, so some channels wouldn't come in very well and you'd have to move around the wire things to get the picture to show up.

 

AND there were only about 7 stations.

 

ETA: We were so lucky because we lived on top of a big hill and my father put the TV antenna on top of his 30ft ham radio tower.  We always had good reception.

 

You had SEVEN stations?  We had four and only three came in clearly, lol.

 ;)

 

We told the kids about the cell phone that came out when I was in high school.  It had a zipper like briefcase and it had to stay plugged into the car and the phone had a cord.  I thought it was so awesome.

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I've introduced my kids to I Love Lucy and Bewitched in the past 2 days.  Both shows have the main characters smoking indoors.  Something my kids never see in real life, thankfully.  It's a bit shocking for them to see.

 

Right?? My favorites are the medical shows with people casually smoking in the hospital. 

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You had SEVEN stations?  We had four and only three came in clearly, lol.

  ;)

 

We told the kids about the cell phone that came out when I was in high school.  It had a zipper like briefcase and it had to stay plugged into the car and the phone had a cord.  I thought it was so awesome.

 

UHF: CBS 4, ABC 5, NBC 7, & PBS on 2 & 11

VHF: Channels 56 & 38 - CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE!!

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We had 3 channels over the air. When we had cable (which had comercials too) we had... well I always thought 13... bug it would have been less as the top number was 13, and of course there was no channel 1. So 12.... but 1 just had weather in a text format, and I think a couple others were also informatiinal and not an actual station with shows... so maybe 10 stations. Now there are so many...and all junk.

 

 

Sent from my SM-T530NU using Tapatalk

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