Old School Nintendo Party
As a child, I loved hearing my grandparents and parents tell stories about when they were kids. And man, was it ever different back then. My Gram told me that when she was a kid (back in the 20s/30s) her family had the only phone in the neighborhood. Folks would come over and ask if they could make calls. My mom told me that when she was a kid in the 60s, she was the first among her friends to have a television set. They’d crowd around the giant box (and little screen) to watch after-school shows.
I like to think that being a child of the 80s I’m immune to having stories like my grandparents and parents. After all, how much has really changed? This got me to thinking about how different it was back then compared to what kids are growing up with now.
When I was a kid…
My First Laptop Session
- There were only 3 Star Wars movies, and they were all great.
- We had cassette tapes for music, and if you really liked someone, you would make them a “mix” tape of your favorite songs. This could be done with a dual cassette recorder, or by putting two tape recorders next to each other — one on “play” and one on “record.”
- We didn’t have a remote control for the TV., we had to turn dials on the front of the television set. This resulted in often leaving the same channel on longer than you would if you didn’t have to get up.
- A TV was called a “television set.”
- We didn’t have cable or satellite TV, so we used an antena. Often one person had to hold the antena in just the right spot to get the good channel.
- We got our first computer when I was 10, and we had to share it with the whole family. A Mac LCII to be exact.
- Floppy disks were floppy. Then they stopped being floppy. Then they went away.
- We got our first cell phone when I was 12, and yep – we had to share it with the whole family. It was the first “flip” and although it makes today’s smart phones look like credit cards, it was far smaller than the Zack Morris/Wall Street versions.
- We got the internet when I was 17. And even then, the computer wasn’t instantly online. We had to “dial up” through a phone line, and often the connection sucked. Praise be when we got that sweet 36.6K, or the illusive 56K – which was like the unicorn of internet speed.
- All cameras used film, which even then made for an expensive habit. You also ended up with loads of ugly pictures and just a few “keepers.” We still put all of them in albums and forced friends and family to look at them.
Me 'n Tom Back in the Day
Can you think of anything else to add? It may not be stories of the Great Depression Era or what it was like at Woodstock, but heck, us children of the 80s gotta teach these kids how good they have it these days! “Back in the day, we used to play View-Master under the table because we didn’t have smart phones!”
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