As my days click by I wonder, "Am I really the person I thought I would be at thirty-eight?" I remember when I was a kid, and I thought that the world was going to be so much different by the time I was in my thirties. You know when you dream of the world when it hit the year 2000. I thought that we would live in a land filled with electric cars that floated on the air and robots would be serving us dinner. I thought our world would be more like the Jetsons. Instead, it seems the world is almost the same. The only differences are the advance in communications. I think that most of the world differs, because technology removed the need for being outdoors. I remember when I was a kid, we didn't really have that much in the way of video game technology. We went outside to play. I rode my big wheel or played soccer with my friends and neighbors. The world seemed so different then. I didn't really have any connections with anyone that lived halfway around the globe, much less anyone who lived two towns away from me. The only exception would be my cousins and other extended family. I was busy exploring the woods near my house, and sometimes getting poison ivy. I use to build makeshift forts with my sister and my friends. We would ride our bikes down the trails and just enjoy the outdoors.
During my days in early education and all the way through high school, there wasn't much in the way of technology. There was a small course within middle school that pertained to the Apple IIC computers, which dealt with elementary aspects of programming and the use of basic DOS systems. When I was at the end of middle schooling, math tutorials had their work on computer terminals with basic DOS setups. These were your ancient versions of the IBM computer. I can even remember the model. We didn't have cellular phones and texting all through high school. Things were limited to passing notes through class. If you were caught, the note was read in front of the class, which was completely mortifying. Especially if the subject matter was of a questionable nature. I do remember, however, that I had the Commodore 64 computer. I remember typing code all day on the computer just for simple programs. I also remember having computers that went on very simple BBS boards, which were extremely primitive versions of chat rooms. This was such a big deal when I was a kid. Now kids have World of Warcraft and dozens of different communication clients and games to use on the internet. Skype is a client you use on your cellphone and your computer. With invention of laptops and mini-notebooks, you can take your computer where ever you go. That was something I could only have wished for when I was a kid.
Now with the invention of game systems like the X-BOX and the Nintendo Wii, nobody seems to see as much sunlight as they used to. I have to say that I am just as guilty as the next, because I spend a great deal of time writing on my computer when I should be outside and on the beach. I can almost say that I wish things didn't arrive so quickly when it came to this amount of technology, but it's something that made our lives easier in the long run. Cellphones are very handy. If my husband's car were to breakdown, he could call the auto club to help him and he could call me up. My BlackBerry, which is a type of cellphone, helps me to keep track of my classes, my appointments, my schedules, my assignments, and other important items. With the convenience of a laptop or notebook, I can take notes from class without having the tediousness of a paper notebook. It is more efficient and definitely assures me that I get all of my notes down without missing any of the data. It is also handy for typing papers without worrying about getting the space in the computer lab. I am thankful for those advances in technology, because they definitely give us the chance to improve how we function educationally. You can practically find any information that you need for papers online anymore. Journal articles for medical, historical, etc., can be found in assorted library databases all around the world and are able in catalogues right through your college libraries or even your public libraries. It's absolutely amazing. We never had that when I was a kid. We had encylopedia Brittanica or you had to go into the library and find the book. I still take joy in looking for books in the library for the information used in thesis statements. The smell of library books is so soothing. I know that it sounds corny, but I can get lost in the stacks. It's something that I became addicted to from the first time my mother took me to the public library as a little one. I can remember the first book that I checked out. It was Madeleine! I loved that book. Since then, every book was better than the next.
I can't remember how we became such a nosey culture though. I remember a time when people weren't so interested in whether or not someone like Britney Spears was driving her child around without a car seat. Maybe I wasn't old enough to really notice that our culture was obsessed with tabloid fodder, or that kind of behavior wasn't splashed all over the television set for anyone to hear. It seemed that the boom of the millenium, meant that the everyone had the right to see what a celebrity looked like underneath their clothes or how they looked when they've drank a full bottle of vodka. It's really absurd and completely disgusting. I've also noticed that there are celebrities who really haven't accomplished anything that would cause them to be celebrities other than coming from money. I will give you two examples: The Kardashians and the Hilton sisters. Sometimes I go through the checkout lines and I see all of these horrible things about people. Funny thing is I don't know half of the names on the magazine covers. Does that make me old, or just out of the loop? Maybe it just means that I am really boring. All I know is that it's ugly. Most of the women on those covers look like the poster children for breast implants and restylane. I was watching Entourage last night, and Beverly D'Angelo, who was also in National Lampoon's Vacation and its various sequels, had so much work done on her face that it was unbelievable. It was one of the most obvious facelifts that I have seen in a while. Not that she didn't look good, because she did, but you could see that there was some work done. Heather Locklear, Cher, and Priscilla Presley are the women who should be kicking their plastic surgeons in the balls. The sad thing is I've only seen it in the checkout line.
I remember a simpler time, when MTV played music and VH1 played adult contemporary music. I remember enjoying the thrill of buying cassettes and records from the store, and playing video games at the arcade. My free time was spent at the mall as a teenager rather than at a computer. Now you can post every move you make on Twitter, every mood you have on Facebook, and if you do go to the mall you can check in on Foursquare. You can publish your writing on a Blog or viral your video creations on YouTube. Downloading your music replaces buying from a music store and you can rent your movies from Netfix instead of Blockbuster. Even politics has changed, because it's become just as sensationalized as tabloid celebrity. We have the fear of overpollution and many hope for clean energy. You would almost think that by now that we would be running on electric cars. It didn't seem to work the way people thought it would. I guess my thoughts were overblown. I thought that by now I would have two kids and a station wagon, but now I realize that wasn't a realistic goal. I didn't know that things would change the way it did this year. There is no way to predict the future. Everyone has their version of how things would look. Some people thought our lives would be as modern as Blade Runner or 2010 a Space Odyssey, but it turns out that version of modern was just fantasy. What do you think the year 3000 will look like? I think that our planet will be a flaming ball of crap by then, but I will be long gone, so what do I know. HA!
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