The Time Machine

Technology is a fantastic thing.

If you don't believe me, maybe I can tweet you from my iPhone or poke your Blackberry from my Facebook.

I must admit that as hard as I try and as much as I think I know, I'm still behind the curve.

At least when you compare me to all humans 13 years and under.

If I need any computer assistance, I don't need the Geek Squad, I just ask my kids.

But it's really not my fault.   My parents should've birthed me 40 years later.

Of course there are some advantages to being an antique.

To me SPAM was a junky food, before it was a junky email.

I remember when Macintosh was an apple.   Apple was a fruit.   Java was a cup of coffee.  A cookie was a treat.

Those computer guys have more of a food addiction than I do.

When I was young if you Google your Dongle too much, you’d go blind.

Password was a game show.

A virus made you feel sick.

Oh, some things haven’t changed.

In sixth grade our school got its first computer, a brand new TRS-80.

That was so cool.

And so slow.

Pong was the greatest video game of all-time.

WAS.

Try to play it now.  I dare you.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the kids of today will never know what life was like before YouTube.

Recently my 11-year old son and I were driving in the car of a friend of mine when my friend ejected a cassette from his dash.

"WHAT IS THAT?” my son said, as if he had seen a dinosaur.

A few days ago, I was grabbing a quick bite at home with the kids, enjoying one of my favorite meals -- Cereal Surprise.

The concoction du jour was one part Honeycomb, one part Sugar Smacks and one part Grape Nuts.

You gotta hit all the food groups.

My son and daughter each threw a french bread pizza into the microwave.

While we were waiting, I informed the youngsters "when I was your age, we didn't have a microwave."

Now who's the dinosaur?

Of course the conversation didn't stop there.

I told them we got water from the sink, not the dispenser on the refrigerator.

If you wanted to change the channel on the TV, you had to get up and do it yourself.  

Remote control?   What a concept.

From time-to-time, one of our three or four channels would go out and a graphic would pop up.

"Please Stand By."

So I'd get off the couch, go stand RIGHT next to the TV.

And within seconds the picture would always come back.

It worked EVERY time.

I told my 13-year old daughter that we never had a VCR player and that DVD were the initials of Mary Tyler Moore's husband.

Mary who?

In part fear and part curiosity, my daughter asked, "how did you watch movies?"

"The movie theatre," I said.

"What happens if you want to see it again?"

"You went to the movies."

"Again."

I honestly cannot remember my first cordless phone, but that had to be one of the great moments of my life.

As someone with some serious pockets of ADD, the ability to talk on the phone while doing something else was a real recipe for success.

And to think that someday they’d invent a cordless phone that you can use from the car.

Or the street.

Or the Starbucks.

What's Starbucks?

As if I didn't feel a million years old already, my son asked what types of pets we had when I was his age.

Well there was Sparky, my little Wooly Mammoth and Bubbles, my adorable Rhamphorhynchus.

How old do they think I am?

I gotta go.

The Golden Girls is on.