Flashback Friday: Writing Your Story One Week at a Time

 

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another trip down memory lane! As you consider preserving part of your story, I’m bringing you a prompt to use each week. I’m excited about the one for this week, because I had fun thinking about it myself!

            This week’s idea to write or record is this: What did you not have as a child that today’s kids couldn’t live without? (Or what did you have that today’s kids would have no idea how to use?)

            Think about things in your:

·         Home

·         School

·         Vehicle

·         Church

·         Neighborhood

·         Job

·         Relationships

My list would include things like this:

Our television wasn’t a flat screen, but it was in a big box cabinet that sat on the floor in our family room. The only channels available were the ones that came in via air signal. We didn’t own a remote control until I was in junior high, so I had to actually get up from the couch, walk across the floor, and turn a knob to change the channel or volume.

Speaking of TV, we had to watch shows when they came on. For a while, we didn’t even have a VCR (!!!) to record something. If you weren’t home, you just missed whatever it was that you wanted to see. On-demand viewing was merely a dream. I don’t even know that we were creative enough to dream it!

I didn’t have a computer until I was a senior in high school. If I wanted to write something, I had to use a pen and paper or type on my electric typewriter. If I wanted to look something up, I went to the library to use card catalogs and encyclopedias. And if I wanted to talk to people, I wrote letters or called them on the phone. Google? Internet? Social media? What?

Our couches didn’t recline. They couched. And our recliners reclined through manual muscle and a lever on the side of the chair. What is this newfangled electric button that lifts the footrest? It’s madness!

Microphones had cords and brightly colored foam screens. Handheld mics? Lapel mics? Over-the-ear mics? Not even on the horizon.

Telephones were one-per-family. (The actual phone and the number.) Phones were centrally located on walls in the house and limited to how far the coiled cord would stretch. (I stretched ours out far enough to get the “privacy” of standing in the utility room – away from my parents – to talk to my friends. If the phone rang, you didn’t know who was calling until you answered it. And if they hung up, it just remained life’s great mystery. If you called someone else and they were on the phone, you heard a blaring busy signal in your ear. Answering machines weren’t a thing. Cordless phones weren’t a thing. Cell phones weren’t a thing.

I had actual, heavy textbooks for each of my classes at school. No devices. No e-learning days. No technology in the classroom – just a good, old-fashioned chalkboard with real chalk and erasers. (And I am so glad.)

Our cars didn’t have heated seats, built in TVs or speakers in the back. The cars of my childhood only had a radio and zero cupholders. It was actually an item on my wish list for my first car to have a built-in CD player and a cup holder.

By the way, we rolled down windows manually. And we had keys that went into locks. (And I locked those keys in my car several times, because it didn’t have anti-locking devices.

Church took place at standard times (no Saturday options) and in person only. We went to Sunday school, church, evening church, and midweek church. We didn’t have coffee and donut time (that’s been a beautiful addition) and we did have bulletins. I miss bulletins. If you wanted to know when a church met, you read the listings in the Saturday newspaper, not Facebook.

And speaking of newspapers, those came to our little plastic box beside the mailbox every day but Sunday. My grandparents took the Sunday paper, and that’s where I read the comics in color and flipped through coupons and the free version of the TV Guide. (I actually subscribed to the Sunday paper when I got out on my own just to get that free TV guide.)

I could write for hours, but I’ll stop. So many memories. I miss some of the things I had/didn’t have as a child, and I welcome other changes. What was life like for you as a child? What did you have or not have that today’s kids would be surprised to know!?