I love living in the future, the past was great too. You can't talk about the future without talking about the past. I am a kid from the 70's and 80's. We were forced to use our imaginations, had to come up with games to play outside or at least play ones that were around for a long time but has changed a little when my generation started playing them. There was no video game systems (at least at first), no home computers and not even cable. I only had 6 tv channels: channel 2, 13/3/31 (whichever it was in the area), channel 4, 7, 9 and PBS.
Our cartoons and kid shows were some that our parents grew up with and some were not; Bugs Bunny, Scooby-doo, Superfriends, Spider-Man, Batman, Mr Rogers, School house rock, electric company, sesame street, Tom and Jerry and more.
We didn't have cell phones so if we wanted to call home or if our parents wanted to get a hold of us, there was the friend's parents phones. Every phone had a cord until the 80's. Even for awhile there were no video tapes to watch your favorite movies. If you missed your favorite tv show, you were screwed. Toys were made so much better than what they are today. You had to use a payphone if you needed to make a call when you weren't home. You better made sure you had change, the right amount and extra for when time ran out and you had to put in more money.
You had to call the operator '0' to connect to the police, ambulance or firemen. You could also call a number to tell you the time. The operator had their hands full because they either connected you to any emergency person or helped you find a phone number or address to a place or person. We also had the yellow and white pages to look up numbers and addresses to people and businesses.
If you wanted or needed to look up information on a state or animal, you had to go to the library and check out books or read an encyclopedia. You had to look up how to spell words in a dictionary. At the library, you had to search through index cards that had their books on file just so you could know if they carried that book.
There were pen pals that you could right to and have it take for ever for that letter to get to them through the mail and for you to get a response.
We would listen to our records all day and try to record our favorite songs from the radio hoping the DJ wouldn't talk over them. We could place more than one 45' on our record players at the same time with an arm holding them up then drop down one at a time when the 45' was done playing. We had to get up to change the channel on the tv and on our radios. We couldn't carry our music with us unless it was just a radio (at least for awhile).
We eventually got what was called walkman's and boom boxes. So now we could carry our favorite music with us. That was pretty cool to experience for the first time.
Then came the video games like Atari and Nintendo, VCR's and cable. I remember when VCR's first came out and the video store Blockbusters came to our area. VHS and Beta were in a war, VHS won. I thought it was the coolest thing to be able to rent or buy your favorite movies and watch them any time.
Cable tv was freakin' awesome. There were just a few movie channels: HBO, Showtime, Playboy and at some point Cinamax. There were a few other channels but none too interesting to me. Then came Nickelodeon with tv shows like 'You can't do that on television' where they would slime people. At some point we got MTV were they played music videos. It was so cool to see your favorite artist bring their songs to life on the screen. The cable box was literally a box with buttons and you had to switch the buttons to the channel you wanted (see photo below). You got a cable tv guide in the mail that lasted for a month telling you what was going to be on the cable channels. I couldn't wait to go through it and marked which movies I wanted to discover for that month.
Mtv really kicked in when Michael Jackson came out with some really cool videos and took them to a different level. I used to watch Mtv all day, dancing and singing to my favorite songs. Other people tried to come up with other music channels like on the weekends there was Night Tracks late at night on one of the regular tv channels. Then came VH1 with their music videos all day long. I remember seeing 'Thriller' for the very first time. I got a rug burn on me knee because I skidded on the carpet trying to get to the front room in time when I heard it coming on.
When it came to video games, I never had an Atari but my mom's friend at the time would bring it over so I could play centipede. I eventually got the Nintendo and I still have it and it works. Since I couldn't play outside much due to my asthma, this was great for me. I would play for hours trying to beat my games. It sucked that I had to start all over again if I turned the game off because there was no such thing as saving your game.
At some point, remotes started to come about. No more getting up to turn on your tv, to change the channel or to operate the radio on your stereo. Another great invention. Cable finally got rid of their channel boxes and came out with their own remote. Now a household had at least 3 remotes because there was no universal remote.
Cameras had film. There was the 110, 35mm and at some point Polaroid. The flashes on the cameras went from one flash cube that was done for with one shot to multiply flash bulbs that you had to attach to your camera. Once that set of flash bulbs were done, you had to get another flash bulb set. You only had a certain number of pictures you could take on each roll of film and you had to make sure you got the right kind of film for the right kind photos you were taking (like indoor, outdoor, sunny or nighttime). 200, 400 and 800 where the ones you had to know to get. You couldn't see your photos until you got them from the lab about a week later (until the instant camera came out). I remember when Kodak first came out with same day picture return then moved to 1 hour.
Fast forward to today. So much has changed in the 45 years I have been alive. I can't even imagine how my parents and grandparents (if they were still alive) feel seeing all the changes the world has gone through since they have been alive.
I didn't expect for this blog to be as long as it is. I just expected to write about living in the future. Then I realized I needed to start with the past. I now have to split this into 2 parts. This first part has come to an end but here is part 2: Click Here
No comments:
Post a Comment